Welcome to another edition of Talsco Weekly

IBM i Briefs: 🔧 Open source powers your IBM i stack. IBM just committed to securing it. 📈 Jim Cramer just called his IBM pick, and he nailed it.
AI: 🏗️ Enterprise AI is hitting a wall. Here’s what Red Hat Summit revealed. ⚙️ Power12 is taking shape, and the AI story is built in.
Career: 🎯 Every IBM i interview comes down to four questions. 💡 The careers AI won’t replace are the ones IBM i developers already hold.
Learning: 📚 Ten more IBM i commands worth adding to your toolkit.
Modernization: 📡 A five-level framework for unlocking IBM i through APIs.
Open Source: ⚡ Deno 2.8 is the Node.js runtime upgrade you didn’t expect.
Vendors: ☁️ Lightedge adds IBM Power Virtual Server to its hybrid cloud portfolio.

IBM i Briefs

🔧 Open source powers your IBM i stack. IBM just committed to securing it

Project Lightwell, a $5 billion initiative from IBM and Red Hat, deploys AI and more than 20,000 engineers to harden the open source software supply chain. A new security clearinghouse model gives enterprises a trusted channel to report vulnerabilities and receive validated patches across both Red Hat offerings and independent community code.

IBM i environments depend on many of these same components. The security foundation just got a serious upgrade.

What is a security clearinghouse?

Think of it as a trusted intermediary between discovering a vulnerability and getting a fix into production. You report the issue through a secure, embargo-protected channel. IBM and Red Hat validate it, backport a fix to the exact dependency versions you already run, and deliver a signed patch without requiring upgrades or exposing your code.

The fix comes to you. Then it gets contributed upstream so the broader ecosystem benefits.

📈 Jim Cramer just called his IBM pick, and he nailed it

IBM has become one of Jim Cramer’s top quantum computing and software stocks, and he is not shy about it. After walking through IBM’s quantum roadmap with CEO Arvind Krishna, Cramer called it the strongest quantum story of any public company. RBC Capital maintained an Outperform rating on the stock, even after trimming its price target to $300 following the Think conference. For IBM i shops, this kind of Wall Street attention is great for the platform.

AI

🏗️ Enterprise AI is hitting a wall. Here’s what Red Hat Summit revealed

The race to deploy AI has outpaced the infrastructure built to support it. Board-level pressure is real, but IT teams are simultaneously managing technical debt, new tooling, and agent complexity. Three signal insights from Red Hat Summit:

Cost is forcing hardware discipline. Enterprises that rushed to buy GPU clusters are now looking at CPUs already in their data centers as a viable, lower-cost inference option.
Agents are straining infrastructure. The CPU-to-GPU ratio is shifting fast as agentic workloads drive more API calls and backend system demands.
Shared platforms beat isolated pilots. Organizations moving from experimentation to production are doing it on unified AI foundations, not department-by-department experiments.

⚙️ Power12 is taking shape, and the AI story is built in

IBM Power chief architect Bill Starke gave POWERUp 2026 attendees a glimpse at what Power12 could look like, including a chiplet “cores out” design and unified matrix math units shared with the Z platform. The numbers matter here.

As Starke’s data showed, offloading to an external GPU takes 500 to 800 nanoseconds. On-chip? “1 nanosecond, sometimes 2 nanoseconds. That’s it.”

Power10 and Power11 already support up to 4 TB of memory per socket, making them serious contenders for keeping AI workloads on the CPU. IBM i shops have more runway than they may think.

Career

🎯 Every IBM i interview comes down to four questions

Nobody asks them directly. But every question in the room traces back to one of them.

Do you understand how systems like this work?
Can you think through problems, not just execute tasks?
Will you fit this team and work independently?
Can you deliver real business value and continuity?

You will not find these in the job description. But the manager is running every answer you give through this filter.

If you are early in your career, knowing this changes how you prepare. Stop rehearsing a tech list. Start thinking about how you solve problems.

If you have not interviewed in years, tenure alone does not answer the filter. How you talk about your work does. Self-awareness carries more weight than you think.

The takeaway: The questions on the surface are not the real questions. Prepare for the four above.

Interested in learning more? Book a 20-minute call.

💡 The careers AI won’t replace are the ones IBM i developers already hold

Research on AI’s impact on computing careers points to a clear pattern: roles requiring systems thinking, platform expertise, and business context are the most resilient.

That describes most IBM i professionals.

RPG developers who understand how business logic connects to Db2, job scheduling, and integrated operations aren’t easily automated away. The risk isn’t replacement. The risk is staying static while the tools around you evolve.

IBM i developers who add AI fluency to deep platform knowledge won’t just survive this shift.

They’ll be in high demand.

Learning

📚 Ten more IBM i commands worth adding to your toolkit

A second batch of essential IBM i commands aimed at developers still building their platform footing.

If you’ve got the basics down, these are the next ones to know:

WRKUSRPRF, GO, WRKLIB, DSPLIB, DSPMSG, WRKMSGD, CRTCLPGM, DLTUSRPRF, CHGUSRPRF, WRKSBMJOB, and DSPPTF.

Each one covers a real daily-use scenario, from managing user profiles and libraries to compiling CL programs and checking PTF levels.

Watch the video walkthroughs.

Modernization

📡 A five-level framework for unlocking IBM i through APIs

IBM i sits at the center of critical business operations for many enterprises. The problem isn’t capability, it’s connectivity. An API modernization model offers a structured path forward without ripping out what works:

Level 1: Legacy Locked. Tight coupling, no external access, innovation stalled.
Level 2: Service-Enabled. Existing programs exposed via REST, first integration wins achieved.
Level 3: Governed APIs. Enterprise-grade management, security, and lifecycle discipline introduced.
Level 4: APIs as Products. Developer experience becomes a priority, IBM i joins the broader architecture.
Level 5: Innovation Engine. APIs extend into partner ecosystems, mobile, and AI-connected workflows.

Progress here doesn’t require disruption. It requires a plan.

Open Source

⚡ Deno 2.8 is the Node.js runtime upgrade you didn’t expect

If your IBM i shop is running Node.js workloads, Deno 2.8 is worth a look. This release makes Deno a near drop-in alternative with meaningful performance gains and tighter Node.js compatibility.

Node.js compatibility jumped from 42% to 76% in a single release, passing over 3,400 of 4,457 Node test suite checks.
npm installs are 3.66x faster on a cold cache, and deno install now works without the npm: prefix.
node:http throughput more than doubled, cutting p99 latency by roughly 40%.
Six new subcommands streamline CI, dependency auditing, version bumping, and packaging.

Vendors

☁️ Lightedge adds IBM Power Virtual Server to its hybrid cloud portfolio

Lightedge, already the nation’s largest private IBM Power Cloud provider by number of LPARs, just expanded its offering with IBM Power Virtual Server (PowerVS). IBM i and AIX customers can now run workloads across private cloud, colocation, or IBM’s public cloud through a single managed services partner. For shops weighing infrastructure flexibility without taking on the complexity of managing multiple vendors, this is worth watching.

Get in Touch

🤝 Ready to Connect?

Whether you’re an RPG developer seeking new career paths or an organization looking to hire IBM i talent, our team is here to help. Reach out today to start the conversation.

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