Top OS/400 Stories from Around the Web

(IT Jungle) Sometimes raising the rent on an old apartment means it's time to move. IBM just announced it is increasing the monthly and annual maintenance on AS/400 and iSeries servers and related auxiliary expansion boxes and peripherals associated with the vintage OS/400 servers. It's not a huge increase and it's not coming until July, but it may give customers a nudge that moves them to a newer box. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Enter all ye who possess great courage and patience. I was told this hand-written sign appeared on the door to an IT department during the last installation of a new operating system. A joke? Perhaps, but probably not all that far from the truth. Who's going to be among the first to install the new i5/OS V6R1 operating system? What will be the lessons learned? READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) IBM Global Services is calling on companies that are planning a V6R1 upgrade. For $5,200 they'll help you get all your ducks in a row before you attempt to migrate to the just-released version of i5/OS. Do you need their help? That's a good question. After a quick assessment of your staff's skill set, you could have your answer. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) You thought sales were brisk at your local Starbucks. Items on the enterprise-class data storage menu are selling faster than you can say "I'll take a venti Caramel Macchiato, please." According to those caffeine-overdosed statistical analysts at IDC, 1,645 petabytes of disk capacity were purchased in the fourth quarter of 2007. That's up 56.3 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2006. READ MORE >

(System iNetwork) Poor old Larry Youngren (RIP). He retired after 31 years at IBM, where he was an expert in microcoding and journaling. In Larry's case, RIP doesn't have anything to do with "rest in peace." He's not ready for the rocking chair just yet and he's certainly not pushing up daisies. Youngren is starting up an organization called Retired i5/OS Professionals (RIP) and encouraging System i experts to stay active in the community after their careers end. READ MORE >

(Information Week) IBM's Rational Software division is expected to release its latest development tool, known as Team Concert, in June (maybe). It will be Eclipse-based and designed with collaborative features that include sharing a common source code repository, tracking and sharing information on bugs, and linking the status of finished code to the results of software testing. READ MORE >

Vendor Announcements, Promotions, and Deals

(IT Jungle) When was the last time you accessed your important business process applications using your favorite office productivity tools such as Excel or PowerPoint? "Never" is not a good answer. Things should be easier than that. Integrating ERP applications pertaining to finance, human resources, manufacturing, and logistics with office productivity software is beginning to take shape. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Open source systems management software is for real. It's being used to control uptime and availability, maintain service level agreements, hit performance goals, and achieve capacity planning. Issues such as scalability, capacity, and ease of installation that previously condemned this software have been much improved, making it a worthy alternative to options that never get off the launching pad because budgets won't support them. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Predictions are easy to make. You can say, as IBM did last week, that integrating business processes with the new mobile workforce will provide great advantage. But will it necessarily come to pass? It seems almost certain. Just as certain is the fact that interoperability will be the most prized feature. Can IBM deliver that? READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Database queries sometimes make you feel like you're knee deep in a mud bog and 20 feet from solid ground. You can see where you want to go and getting there should be easy . . . but it ain't. If you need to view and update files without getting bogged down by complex searches in DB2/400 and SQL, here's a rope to pull yourself out of that mud hole. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) You may know regulatory compliance by the name that specifically applies to your type of business--PCI, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and many other regulations. They are putting organizations in a position to collect and analyze logs from their servers and network devices. They are also putting a strain on those organizations because they may not have the tools to do the required work. That's where managed service providers come into the picture. READ MORE >

Redbooks, White Papers, and Other OS/400 Resources

(COMMON) The online session guide for the upcoming COMMON Annual Meeting and Exposition provides a quick and easy overview of topics that are of interest to System i professionals. Browsing these topic areas and brief session descriptions might give you some ideas for advancing your career or getting a work project off the back burner. READ MORE >

(MKS) Change management allows businesses to automate IT and software processes, while uniting process frameworks such as ITIL, CMMI and CobiT. The goal is to achieve productivity gains and meet IT governance and compliance goals. This white paper closely examines controls for delivering IT changes. READ MORE >

(IBM) All programs moving to i5/OS V6R1, which will be available in March, will need a degree of conversion to run. In order for a program to be converted, its creation data (sometimes referred to as observability) must be available for the system to make use of during a conversion process. Programs created for V5R1 or later have their creation data automatically saved during program creation. Those with programs created for OS/400 V4R5 and earlier need to ensure that the creation data is available for the conversion process. This technical paper provides a focus on what you should expect in terms of conversion processes. READ MORE >

(Zend) This technical paper explains how System i applications can be integrated with external applications and services using PHP. It provides information on creating and deploying Web services that provide the interoperability that many System i shops are hoping to achieve. READ MORE >

(PowerTech) "PCI Compliance for IBM System i (AS/400)," is a white paper that examines the 12 main requirements of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard and explains the steps to reach compliancy in i5/OS terminology. The company's Compliance Monitor software plays a large role in this process; however, much of the information is vendor neutral and useful to those who do not use PowerTech products or services. READ MORE >

Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings

See our full calendar of events at
http://www.itjungle.com/fhm/fhm-calendar.html

March 27 -- Webcast - i5/OS V6R1 includes several important enhancements to RPG IV. During this session, RPG expert Bob Cozzi details these newest operating system features and illustrates how they could be used. As is his style, Cozzi will emphasize those that he thinks are important to most RPG developers and identify those he believes are strategic to IBM's roadmap. This session begins at 1 p.m. EDT and is hosted by Linoma Software. LEARN MORE >

March 28 -- Chicago, Illinois - A one-day application modernization technical seminar focusing on service oriented architecture, Web services, and extending the value of RPG-based applications and OS/400-based system hardware is being presented by ASNA. This event provides an introduction to Web Services and service oriented architecture while emphasizing team skills. LEARN MORE >

March 30-April 3 -- Nashville, Tennessee - COMMON's 2008 Annual Meeting and Exposition features five full days of in-depth System i education (i5/OS, iSeries, and AS/400) that includes all-day pre-conference workshops, all-day Integrated Seminars, open labs and a wide variety of regular-length sessions. More than 500 sessions will be offered. The full agenda includes numerous networking events throughout the week and the world's largest System i-related Exposition with more than 80 industry exhibitors including IBM. A separate IT Executive Conference is also planned. COMMON is the world's largest users group of midrange IBM and IBM-compatible technology. More than 4,000 individual and corporate members are a part of the organization. LEARN MORE >

April 6-11 -- Las Vegas, Nevada - Impact 2008, IBM's "Smart SOA Conference" is a showcase for WebSphere as the foundation, the tools, and all the materials needed to create a service oriented architecture. Technical experts from IBM, analysts, and companies that have implemented SOA solutions are taking the starring roles in this production. In addition to educational sessions and keynote addresses, there will be a solution center expo area. LEARN MORE >

April 8-10 -- Lake Geneva, Wisconsin - The 23rd annual Wisconsin Midrange Computer Professionals Association (WMCPA) Spring Technical Conference will be held at the Grand Geneva Hotel. Educational session topics include: security, backup and recovery, RPG, PHP, XML, CL, and SQL. A tentative agenda featuring these and more topics can be found online. Session speakers include well-known experts such as: George Farr, Jon Paris, Susan Gantner, Bryan Meyers, Carol Woodbury, George Weaver, Linda Hirsch, Mark Holm, Linda Cole, Jim Oberholtzer, Bruce Vining, Debbie Saugen, Robert Bestgen and Barbara Morris. An experts' roundtable discussion is scheduled for 7 p.m. on April 8. The two-day technical conference follows on April 9 and 10. Accommodations are reasonably priced at $85 per night. LEARN MORE >