Welcome to this week's edition of IBM i Pulse, your favorite news roundup. Before we begin, I want to mention that we were glad to get some great feedback for our Profound UI 5.3 webinar. You can watch the replay here if you weren't able to make it. Now let's get to the news.

Rational Developer for i 9.5: New Features You Should Be Using
by Brian May

• RDi is where you should be doing your RPG development work. Period.
• Here are some goodies in RDi 9.5 to make your life easier.

Source: http://www.mcpressonline.com/rpg/rational-developer-for-i-95-new-features-you-should-be-using.html

Use SQL To Change A Substring
by Ted Holt

• Occasionally I need to change part of a string value in a database table. SQL has three mechanisms that let me accomplish such a thing.
• Do you know what those three mechanisms are and how to use them?

Source: http://www.itjungle.com/fhg/fhg020916-story02.html

The Jobs Of The People Who Make IBM i Platforms Work
by Timonthy Prickett Morgan

• ... there is another crucial element to the platform that often gets overlooked: the people who turn the machines into applications and, in turn, money from which they derive their many livings.
• I have seen internal IBM data that shows only about 30,000 customers are on Software Maintenance services with Big Blue, and as I have said before, based on the customer bases of software suppliers and resellers, I think this number represents those elite, active customers.

Source: http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh020816-story02.html

All Signs Point To The Cloud, But Will IBM i Crowd Follow?
by Alex Woodie

• American companies are moving workloads to big public computing clouds from Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and others at an unprecedented rate, spurring a massive data center building boom.
• At this point, your average IBM i shop will be saying "The cloud sounds great. I don't want to go extinct and I want my business to adapt to the digital transformation occurring around me. But how exactly do I get there?"
• Clearly, the numbers show that IBM i shops are moving to the cloud more slowly than the population at large.

Source: http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh021516-story02.html

Speed Versus Need In IBM i Mobile Initiatives
by Dan Burger

• Security and employee education are two major issues that are being de-emphasized or ignored until something bad happens.
• The popularity of BYOD (bring your own device) connections to unsecured networks and applications and untrusted sources, brings malware one step closer to the enterprise.

Source: http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh021516-story03.html

IBM Wheels And Deals On Big Iron Compute And Memory
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

• Maybe IBM's sales force is doing this, and maybe its resellers are doing this, but the past two years during the Power8 generation have been the most quiet ones I can remember when it comes to a lack of formal deals.
• In the current deal, IBM is holding the discounts steady across Power7 and Power7+ machines, whether they are for core or memory activations, and keeping them consistent (and lower) on the Power8 machines.

Source: http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh021516-story01.html

And that's it for this week! Remember to subscribe to our blog to keep up with the next IBM i pulse.