IBM i brief on AI dominance at POWERUp 2026, rising Power Systems hardware costs, strong IBM infrastructure earnings; AI coding assistants running locally, historical AI roots; career insights on tech disruption; development updates including ACS security patch and AI’s impact on coding practices; hiring challenges with AI tools; leadership book recommendation; upcoming POWERUp conference; trends discussing IBM i’s evolution and AI-driven disruption.
Welcome to another edition of Talsco Weekly
- IBM i Brief: 🏙️ AI is taking over POWERUp 2026 in New Orleans. 📈 Power Systems hardware is getting more expensive — fast. 📊 IBM’s infrastructure business just posted a standout quarter.
- AI: 🔒 Your AI coding assistant. Your machine. Your data. 🧮 AI didn’t start with ChatGPT. It started in 1959.
- Career: ⏳ The producers always said the same thing.
- Development: 🔧 ACS just got a security-critical update you shouldn’t skip. 🎙️ AI is changing how developers work — even outside the IBM i world.
- Hiring: 🤝 AI can write code. It can’t hire your next developer.
- Leadership: 📚 A leadership book written by one of our own.
- Learning: 🏗️ The largest IBM i community event in the world is days away.
- Trends: 💡 IBM i was a zero to one. What comes next?
IBM i Brief
🏙️ AI is taking over POWERUp 2026 in New Orleans
COMMON’s annual conference runs April 27–30 at the New Orleans Marriott, drawing an expected 1,100–1,200 IBM i professionals for roughly 310 sessions. AI dominates the agenda.
With nearly 50 sessions carrying AI in the title, the message is clear: this isn’t a trend — it’s the curriculum.
Steve Will, Tim Rowe, Carol Woodbury, and the imPower Technologies team are all on the roster. If you’re headed to New Orleans, bring your questions.
The answers are on the schedule.
📈 Power Systems hardware is getting more expensive — fast
IBM is rolling out another round of price increases on May 1, following hikes that took effect April 1. The culprit is a global DRAM and flash supply crunch driven by GenAI demand from hyperscalers and cloud builders — analysts project the shortage persists through 2027 or 2028. Increases are steep across the board — Deep Archive Servers up 275%, DS8000 R9 arrays up 90%, standard DIMM memory doubled.
IBM has signaled prices could adjust monthly. If a hardware refresh or upgrade is on your roadmap, the time to move is now.
📊 IBM’s infrastructure business just posted a standout quarter
IBM reported Q1 2026 revenue of $15.9 billion, up 9% and ahead of Wall Street expectations. Infrastructure led the way — up 15% overall, with IBM Z up 51% and hybrid infrastructure up 28%. Software grew 11%, and IBM maintained its full-year outlook. CEO Arvind Krishna pointed to AI as a consistent tailwind, with enterprises doubling down on hybrid environments, workload control, and core modernization. The platform story is holding.
The Opportunity: IBM’s strongest segment wasn’t consulting or SaaS — it was infrastructure. Enterprises are making deliberate choices about where workloads run and who controls the infrastructure underneath them. IBM i shops already made that choice. The market is catching up.
AI
🔒 Your AI coding assistant. Your machine. Your data.
Most AI coding tools send your code to a remote server — that’s how they work.
For IBM i shops handling sensitive business data, that’s a problem.
IBM’s tutorial shows developers how to run Granite 4, IBM’s open-source AI model, entirely on their own workstation using Ollama and Continue inside VS Code.
No code leaves the building. No cloud required. AI-assisted development, on your terms, at zero licensing cost.
🧮 AI didn’t start with ChatGPT. It started in 1959
On April 16, 1959, John McCarthy unveiled LISP — a language built not for business systems, but for symbolic reasoning and knowledge representation. It became the foundation of early AI research for decades.
The IBM i community understands this better than most: platforms built on deep, foundational thinking don’t expire — they compound.
What’s changed recently isn’t the idea of AI.
It’s the scale, the cost, and the moment it finally landed in the hands of everyday developers.
Seventy years of ideas just became usable.
Career
⏳ The producers always said the same thing
Every wave of accessible technology brings the same warning from skilled professionals: this will ruin everything. Typographers said it about desktop publishing. Photographers said it about digital cameras. RPG developers are hearing a version of it now.
Consumers outnumber producers, and the market moves when consumers demand it.
IBM i shops didn’t rush to adopt AI, and that patience is becoming an asset. The platform’s depth still requires real expertise. But the developers who lean into new tools — rather than resist them — tend to end up with more opportunity, not less.
The best response to disruption has always been to make good stuff.
Development
🔧 ACS just got a security-critical update you shouldn’t skip
IBM i Access Client Solutions version 1.1.9.12 dropped in April 2026, but the more urgent story is 1.1.9.11 — it patched an XML External Entity (XXE) injection vulnerability that could allow an attacker to exploit a crafted PDF/XFA file. IBM strongly recommends moving off anything from 1.1.9.8 through 1.1.9.10. The new 1.1.9.12 release adds SELF utility support and 13 new “Insert from Examples” for Run SQL Scripts — including IFS security checks worth running today. If you haven’t updated, now is the time.
🎙️ AI is changing how developers work — even outside the IBM i world
The PHP community is having the same conversation we are. On a recent PHP Architect podcast, hosts discussed using Claude Code with subagents — front-end, back-end, database, and QA — and where the workflow breaks down.
The bottleneck isn’t generation, it’s review. One host put it plainly: AI-generated code without human review is a liability, not an asset. The tooling is moving fast. The discipline to use it well is the differentiator.
So whether it’s PHP or RPG, AI without the human is a liability.
Hiring
🤝 AI can write code. It can’t hire your next developer.
We talk to IBM i candidates every day. And increasingly, they’re frustrated — with automated screening, with AI-generated job descriptions that don’t match the role, with processes that feel like they were built to filter people out.
The IBM i talent pool is too small and too specialized for that approach. The right hire isn’t found by algorithm. It’s found by someone who knows the platform, knows the community, and knows the difference between a candidate who looks right on paper and one who will actually deliver. That’s what Talsco does. If you’re hiring IBM i professionals, let’s talk.
Leadership
📚 A leadership book written by one of our own
Tilmer Wright spent nearly four decades leading teams in corporate America — including IBM i shops.
His new book, How to Manage Without Being a Jackass, isn’t a framework or a five-point plan. It’s a straight-talk conversation about what it actually takes to lead people well. Sharp enough to make you wince, honest enough to stick.
If you manage an IBM i team — or work for someone who should read this — it’s worth your time.
Learning
🏗️ The largest IBM i community event in the world is days away
POWERUp 2026 runs April 27–30 at the New Orleans Marriott. Hosted by COMMON, it’s where the IBM i community comes together to learn, connect, and grow — hands-on sessions, expert-led training, and the kind of peer conversations you can’t replicate online.
It’s not too late to get to New Orleans.
Trends
💡 IBM i was a zero to one. What comes next?
When IBM built the AS/400, they didn’t improve the computer — they reimagined it. Integrated OS. Integrated database. Integrated security. That’s not 1 to n. That’s 0 to 1. The ecosystem that grew around it? Largely one to n — incremental, iterative, familiar. Modernization tools, green-screen wrappers, different flavors of the same search engine.
Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. Tomorrow’s champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today’s marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique.
But AI doesn’t iterate. It disrupts. For the first time in a long time, the IBM i space has a genuine chance for a second zero to one moment.
Will someone take it?
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