After much anticipation, IBM has announced the release of IBM i V7R3. Its enhancements and upgrades should be a great leap forward for businesses that run on IBM i Power Systems (as400 / i Series) and rely on smart data management for their livelihood. IBM i V7R3 puts the emphasis on three critical components of IT: Insight, Security, and Integration.
IT managers looking for greater ‘insight’ into how their data impacts their business will be pleased with how IBM i V7R3 approaches the problem. With transaction processing the norm for businesses, managers today need a greater understanding of past data performance in order to plan for the future; often they’ve relied on ‘snapshots’ of previous data activity to get the big picture, or would have to reconstruct activity entirely. It was cumbersome and time-consuming. IBM i V7R3 offers a more user-friendly solution: DB2 Temporal Support technology lets IT managers track data more closely and automatically story older versions of data as it’s updated. Now, when managers need information about past data performance, and the answers are readily available. It is true ‘insight’ into data history and performance.
IBM i V7R3 has also added an extensive set of OLAP functions to allow analytical processing to be done directly against live data using SQL. This used to be done in IBM i shops against older copies of data, usually calling for an investment in specialized analysis software. Today that ‘insight’ is available right from IBM i DB2.
Security has been addressed in a significant way with IBM i V7R3. With the focus on DB2 security to enable customers and application developers to implement policies in a ‘data-centric’ way, security has been defined at the database level. Yet thwarting the ‘over-authorized’ user has still proved vexing, principally because companies have been too liberal with their system and its data; that compromises security. Often companies authorize access to data to users who have little or no reason for such access. With i V7R3, IBM is instituting a capability called Authority Collection making it easier to toe manage and audit user authorities.
Authority Collections track all the objects that users come in contact with during the day; it then reports what ‘authority’ that user has and what minimum authority that user could have in order to complete his or her job. This brings an added level of security, ensuring that only those personnel who need access to data will have access to data. It also precludes employees from altering critical data — without affecting the operations of the office. This security upgrade can be used by companies themselves, or in partnership with their security firm.
Lastly, IBM Version i V7R3 makes great strides in the area of integration. It offers a highly scalable, virus-resistant architecture with an exemplary reputation for exceptional business resiliency. Companies running applications on IBM i on a Power server can focus on innovation and deliver new value to their business, rather than spending time managing data center operations.
IBM Version i V7R3 integrates a combination of a DB2 relational database, greatly enhanced security, standards-based Internet technology, networking, and storage management capabilities. For example, IBM integrates the SQL standards-based DB2 database for IBM i with advanced database management utilities, as well as additional components such as multiple file system options, directory capability, an HTTP web server, a web applicationserver, and a web-services environment.
Preintegration and testing of IBM i is a key factor in enabling companies to achieve lower operating costs by deploying applications more rapidly, while maintaining them with fewer staff. IBM i V7R3 also features virtualization and workload management, enabling businesses to consolidate and run multiple applications and components simultaneously on the same system. This heightens system utilization, while delivering a better ROI on IT.
In short, IBM Version i V7R3 stands to be a groundbreaking enhancement to businesses for which data is crucial. Contact your ABC Services representative to learn more about upgrading your IBM i server to V7R3.