Talsco Weekly: Talent Gap: A Reality Check for IBM i Shops

Welcome to another edition of Talsco Weekly

IBM i Brief: 🔷 IBM Power servers get major AI upgrade. IBM Champions Recognized at TechXchange 📹. 2024 IBM i Year in Review: Key Highlights 📋.
AI: 🔄 Lisp remains influential in programming history. 🤖 AI experts tackle trust and bias challenges.
Career: 👔 IBM i Career preparedness requires proactive planning.
Development: 💻 VSCode revolutionizes IBM i development workflow. 🔄 ODBC driver updates streamline database connectivity.
Hiring: 🎯 Talent Gap: A Reality Check for IBM i Shops.
Modernization: 🔄 AI-Driven Modernization: A New Era for IBM i.
Security: 🔒 Federal agencies want memory-safe codinlanguages. 🛡️ Ransomware threats evolve beyond Windows systems.

IBM i Brief

🔷 IBM Power servers get major AI upgrade IBM unveils an ambitious roadmap featuring the new Spyre AI Accelerator and Power11 processor. The next-gen system promises enhanced AI capabilities, with Spyre offering dedicated AI processing and Power11 delivering up to 25% more cores than Power10. The plan includes AI-assisted RPG development tools and future chipset-based architecture, positioning IBM Power servers at the forefront of enterprise AI innovation. IBM Champions Recognized at TechXchange 📹

See if you can recognize some of the IBM Champions that were recognized as IBM Champions at TechXchange.

Listen to what the IBM Champions have to say about their community of like-minded individuals that are all pushing toward a common goal of excellence.

2024 IBM i Year in Review: Key Highlights 📋

ITJungle, summarizes a transformative year for IBM i marked by significant changes in subscription models, technological advancements, and strategic shifts in business operations. The platform demonstrated resilience while adapting to modern demands.

January: Power Systems showed growth for the second consecutive year, while IBM i salary concerns emerged.
February: Record security concerns highlighted in Fortra's IBM i Marketplace Study, but implementation lagged.
March: IBM clarified subscription plans and introduced healthcare solutions while Db2 Web Query was sunsetted.
April: Price hikes implemented across hardware and software, pushing toward subscription model adoption.
May: Spring TR brought Merlin 2.0, and IBM announced RPG co-pilot development at POWERUp.
June: POWERUp conference exceeded 1,000 attendees; platform celebrated 36th birthday milestone.
July: IBM sought RPG samples for co-pilot training and resolved Power10 cooling fan issues.
August: New DDR5 memory cards released for Power10; entry-level subscription program ended.
September: IBM closed China labs, introduced the Mapepire database driver.
October: Fall TR released early, private PowerVS pods launched for on-premises systems.
November/December: Power11 details revealed, new price hikes announced for 2025.

AI

🔄 Lisp remains influential in programming history

As the second-oldest high-level programming language still in use, Lisp pioneered numerous computer science concepts. Originally designed for mathematical notation, it became essential in AI research.

Part of what makes Lisp distinctive is that it is designed to evolve. As new abstractions become popular (object-oriented programming, for example), it always turns out to be easy to implement them in Lisp. Like DNA, such a language does not go out of style. - Paul Graham, ANSI Common Lisp

Modern dialects like Common Lisp, Scheme, and Clojure continue its legacy of innovation in areas like tree data structures, dynamic typing, and automatic storage management.

Interested in learning Lisp? Here is a Lisp tutorial to get you started.

💡Ever wonder who coined the term “Artificial Intelligence”?

🤖 AI experts tackle trust and bias challenges

As AI becomes more prevalent, experts are grappling with key issues around trust, accuracy, and fairness.

In fact, leading researchers highlight concerns about AI hallucinations in coding advice and emphasize the need for diverse perspectives in AI development.

What role does local AI development play in addressing bias? Experts emphasize its importance in creating more equitable AI systems.

Career

👔 IBM i Career preparedness requires proactive planning

Most professionals underestimate the importance of being ready for career transitions.

While some life events are unpredictable, career planning shouldn't be.

Success often depends on helping others, building genuine relationships, and maintaining a strong professional network before you need it.

Having a list of trusted contacts and nurturing these connections consistently can make a difference when unexpected opportunities or challenges arise.

Development

💻 VSCode revolutionizes IBM i development workflow

Nick Litten demonstrates VSCode's powerful capabilities for IBM i development, focusing on modules, ILE, and bound programs. The tutorial showcases practical implementations of modern development tools, highlighting improved productivity through features like syntax highlighting and debugging. VSCode's integration with IBM i tools and cross-platform compatibility make it an attractive alternative to traditional development environments.

💡Another great way to get learn about VSCode and how to incorporate it into your tool kit is to join Code for IBM i Fridays over at the Seiden Group. It is an online gathering to share, learn, solve problems, and contribute improvements to Code for i.

🔄 ODBC driver updates streamline database connectivity IBM's latest ODBC driver releases bring significant improvements across platforms. The May 2024 build (1.1.0.28) addresses critical issues in PHP applications, translation handling, and stored procedure execution. Notable enhancements include TLS support using OpenSSL, improved timeout controls, and better UTF-8 character handling for international data.

Hiring

🎯 Talent Gap: A Reality Check for IBM i Shops

As this article on cybersecurity talent, points out hiring practices are the real problem in attracting talent.

This also applies to the IBM i market.

Talent is hard to come by, so make sure you do two things: retain the talent you have and rethink your current hiring practices.

Hiring Challenges: Many organizations have hiring prohibitive policies from attracting the right talent. One major issue is requiring RPG developers to have a bachelor's degree. Consider your own department—if only 3 out of 10 developers have bachelor's degrees, requiring one automatically eliminates 70% of qualified candidates.
Salary bands need attention: Some IBM i shops are underpaying their modern RPG developers compared to rest of the market. This can happen in stable environments with low turnover, but also in shops that haven't kept pace with IBM i advancement. Both scenarios require immediate salary review to remain competitive. If you are curious to learn more about salary ranges for IBM i shops here in the US, feel free to contact us for a breakdown.
Skills Focus: IBM i shops can benefit from modernizing their code base, encouraging their developers to use RDi or VSCode, as well as embracing APIs and web services to ensure they stay excited about their work. If you don’t, they might leave.
Retention Strategy: Focus on work-life balance and providing growth opportunities to keep valuable IBM i security professionals.

👥 Ready to transform your IBM i talent strategy? Talsco offers comprehensive hiring solutions Succession Planning & Modernization: Expert IBM i talent matching for your direct hire needs RPG Flex Hire: Flexible project-based talent for your consulting needs Hire, Train, and Mentor: Build your development pipeline with emerging talent Contact us today to discuss how we can strengthen your IBM i team!

Modernization

🔄 AI-Driven Modernization: A New Era for IBM i

As IBM i platform evolves, the convergence of traditional modernization efforts with AI capabilities presents unprecedented opportunities for business transformation. This intersection creates a powerful synergy that can revolutionize how organizations approach their modernization journey.

Legacy Systems Meet AI: Integrating AI tools with existing IBM i applications can enhance functionality while preserving critical business logic
Automated Modernization: AI-powered code analysis and conversion tools can accelerate the modernization process while reducing risks.
Business Process Optimization: The combination of modernized systems and AI can identify efficiency opportunities and streamline operations.

While AI tools can enhance modernization efforts, the foundation of successful IBM i modernization starts with updating legacy code.

Converting fixed-format RPG to free-format RPG, implementing modern programming practices, and adopting modern development tools like RDi or VSCode are crucial first steps.

Only then can organizations effectively layer in AI capabilities to further transform their business processes.

Security

🔒 Federal agencies want memory-safe codinlanguages

The FBI and CISA have called for organizations to stop developing new applications in C and C++, citing security concerns. The agencies set a January 2026 deadline for creating migration roadmaps away from these memory-unsafe languages. While this directive primarily targets critical infrastructure, IBM i shops using C++ (about 9% according to recent surveys) may need to evaluate their development practices.

Question? 🤔 Is it really the C and C++ that is the problem, or is it coding standards or lack of testing?

🛡️ Ransomware threats evolve beyond Windows systems

Cybercrime syndicates intensified their tactics in 2024, with ransomware payments skyrocketing from $10,000 in 2016 to nearly $3M today, marking unprecedented growth in cybersecurity threats.

While Windows machines remain the primary target for ransomware attacks (93%), IBM i servers face increasing risks through their Integrated File System (IFS). Security experts emphasize the need for comprehensive protection strategies, including network segmentation, MFA implementation, and database encryption.

This article highlights the importance of IFS security configuration and exit point monitoring to prevent successful attacks.

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