THE FOUR HUNDRED - Power Systems & IBM i Insights

1. Talking Power Systems And IBM i With Bargav Balakrishnan

   In last week’s issue of The Four Hundred, we told you about how the Power Systems division had a new vice president of product management – to be specific, Bargav Balakrishnan, who has spent decades in various technical and management roles within Big Blue. Balakrishnan takes over from Steve Sibley, who has been steering Power Systems hardware development since July 2007 and who was the longest serving executive in that role since the launch of the AS/400 back in 1988.

   This week, we had a chat with Balakrishnan about the Power Systems business and the IBM i platform, and …

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2. 2025 IBM i Predictions, Part Two

   With new wall calendars and a new (old) guy in the White House, change is in the air as we start off 2025. That much was obvious from the first installment of IBM i predictions, which ran last week. This second batch of predictions may be even bolder than the first.

   We’re in the midst of a shakeup in the tech job market, thanks to several years of elevated inflation, emergence of cloud computing, and new technologies like AI. How does that impact the IBM i job market? For insight, we turn to Bob Langieri, the owner of Excel Technical …

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3. Guru: Creating An RPG Stored Procedure With Parameters

   There are times we need to build processes that will be used across different platforms. An example is a pricing routine. When a system needs to get pricing, we need to make sure the price the customer pays is the same regardless of how the order was created in our system.

   One way to create this functionality is using web services. Another way we can provide this functionality is through stored procedures. This series of tips will focus on different ways we can build stored procedures on IBM i.

   For the first part, I created an RPG program (Figure 1) …

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4. Beta For RPG Coding Assistant On Track for 2Q25

   IBM is ramping up development of the AI-based RPG Code Assist and expects to have a working prototype ready for testing by the end of the first quarter, IBM i chief technology officer Steve Will said in a webinar last month. The goal is to have a beta ready for during the second quarter and general availability hopefully in the second half of the year, he added.

   Large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI’s GPT and Google’s Gemini have taken the world by storm, and companies are investing tens of billions of dollars in the nascent tech to gain …

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5. IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Numbers 1 And 2

   With these two first editions of the IBM i PTF Guide, we start the patching of the venerable descendant of the OS/400 operating systems for 2025. And so, it still being January, we can wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year and, for those of you who are struggling because of natural disasters, medical issues, or economic woes, we feel your pain. It is hard for a lot of us right now.

   With that, let us dive into the first and second of the Guides for 2025.

   With Numero Uno, there was not a whole lot going …

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