Top OS/400 Stories from Around the Web

(IT Jungle) Wave good-bye to the System i ServerProven rebate program in the Americas and Canada. The program that kicked back cash ranging from $750 to $70,000 on new boxes and from $225 to $21,000 on upgrades to i5 boxes when purchased with systems and application software created by independent software vendors and certified through the IBM ServerProven program has been eighty-sixed from the scene. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) This story on voice over IP implementation, a follow-up on the introduction to VoIP article a week ago, focuses on building a redundant system to ensure the expected level of availability that enterprises require from their telephone systems and brings into play the integration of business information that dramatically improves operations such as help desks and telesales. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) High availability is most often thought of as a software-based solution. However, IBM, and other companies, offer hardware-based, external solutions. External high availability will almost assuredly be more expensive, but as this trucking company discovered, it paid off in terms of reliability. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Out in the business world there are CEOs pretending to be CIOs and CIOs pretending to be CEOs. It's an interesting, sometimes lethal, masquerade. In most cases, competition takes care of this foolishness because on the bottom line IT can play a huge role in business, but it does not drive business. Good business decisions drive business. Bad decisions kill companies. READ MORE >

(SearchCIO) Recently we've had the pleasure of watching a few overpaid CEOs fall off their high horses after their performance did not justify the price they were paid. Will there be a ripple effect that is felt among the ranks of the CIOs? Not likely, says this article which terms CIO salaries as "under the radar" in comparison to the deals many CEOs have (or had). READ MORE >

(System i Magazine) Doug Mack, the System i DB2 product marketing manager, covers the business intelligence topic with a review of IBM technologies and products that substantiate the Big Blue point of view that the System i provides everything needed for a complete BI solution. Mack's topics fit into the categories of systems infrastructure, plumbing, and software. Mentions include DB2 for i5/OS, high availability, database parallelization, query optimization, encoded vector indexes, materialized query tables, and software tools. READ MORE >

(System iNetwork) Customer wins--especially those that top the million dollar mark for an System i server, software, middleware, and hosting services--will often generate some news. Check out what this company has invested in and how IBM Global Services has made them happier than ducks on a pond. READ MORE >

Vendor Announcements, Promotions, and Deals

(IT Jungle) IBM's System i models 515 and 525 "Express" servers, as you should know by now, brought user-based pricing to the platform. This move has been widely applauded. However, the traditional method of hardware sizing using factors such as including batch and interactive CPW, disk and disk arms, and memory is no longer valid. Counting concurrent users is now the pricing yardstick, and for this you may need some help. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) The buzz created in the high availability software market when Vision Solutions bought its two most threatening competitors has yet to quiet down. The customers are interested in a smooth transition involving maintenance, product development, and a long-term product roadmap. Organizations exploring HA and disaster recovery strategies are naturally interested, too. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) On a scale of one to 10, how would you rate the difficulty of splitting spool files into multiple reports and then merging the multiple reports into one? OK, good. Don't put your pencils down, here's another question based on the same scale. How difficult would it be to extract specific information from spool files, apply calculations, and then export extracted and manipulated information from spools into Excel? If you like the idea of these tasks becoming fast and easy, read on. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) The Power variant of Red Hat's new Enterprise Linux 5 server operating system is ready to ship and so is IBM's per-server licensing arrangement, which replaces the per-core pricing that previously applied to Red Hat Linuxes on Power-based machines. The move was designed to simplify licensing in virtualized environments. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Virtualization technology is about to make great strides in the ease-of-use category. In the System i arena that pertains to the management of logical partitions and includes interfaces that allow system administrators to see the utilization of processor cores, main memory, and I/O bandwidth for storage and networks across all operating systems. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Web applications developed with PHP are coming to the System i platform. The worldwide popularity of PHP is expected to be widely accepted in the i5/OS community as well, where cross-platform application interoperability is a much-needed feature. Here's a new beta program that might interest you. READ MORE >

Redbooks, White Papers, and Other OS/400 Resources

(Bytware) What are your security worries? Perhaps your security policy is shot full of holes or it is time consuming, difficult to manage, or error prone. This white paper distinguishes between an object-based approach and a transaction-based approach. When security is your responsibility, you should know all the potential weaknesses. READ MORE >

(Aldon) This white paper on application lifecycle management (ALM) is specialized for IBM's WebSphere customers. It examines Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), which relies on linking applications across multiple computing platforms, and points to the key elements of ALM. Among those elements are such things as software change management for reducing errors and improving code quality, integration of independent development environments, workflow management, and centralized inventory management that connect applications with business functions. READ MORE >

(Key Information Systems) The benefits of IP telephony are covered in this report on managing voice information like you manage your other corporate data. The emphasis is on making the network infrastructure a foundation for voice communications using Internet Protocol, commonly referred to as voice over IP or VoIP. Key issues include cost comparisons and management issues. READ MORE >

(iMessaging Systems) This white paper examines interactive voice response software (sometimes referred to as call routing) and how it works with OS/400-based applications. The description includes examples of how customers can gain automated 24-hour-a-day access to company services and information. Cases are taken from several industries and an ROI analysis based on each example. READ MORE >

(IBM) Logical Partitioning (LPAR) allows users to run multiple operating systems, each a partition on the same physical processor, memory, and I/O attachment configuration and is the key to server consolidation, a great idea that is not even close to being used to its potential when it comes to multiple operating systems. This redbook delves into the system planning and deployment tools and processes for planning, ordering, and deploying a partitioned environment. READ MORE >

Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings

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

June 27 -- Webinar - This session is specifically for the users of Infor ERP software who need better reporting and data analysis tools than Infor provides. The focus will be on producing visual presentations, analytical models, spreadsheets, and more useful and easy-to-read reports. Topics of discussion will include the use of ad hoc query, DB2 integration with Microsoft Excel and other Office productivity tools, online analytical processing, and live, Web-based performance dashborards. This presentation is hosted by New Generation Software and highlights that company's NGS-IQ business intelligence software. The session begins at 2 p.m. EDT. LEARN MORE >

June 28 -- Webinar - Halcyon Software is hosting a session titled "How to Get Smart with Automation and get real ROI," presented by Donnie MacColl, the company's head of technical services. The session will examine customer experiences and the results of automating their System i environments. The event, which originates in England, begins at 6 a.m. in the Eastern Time Zone of the United States. LEARN MORE >

July 4 -- Webinar - Halcyon Software is hosting a session titled "How to Get Smart with Automation and get real ROI," presented by Donnie MacColl, the company's head of technical services. The session will examine customer experiences and the results of automating their System i environments. The event, which originates in England, begins at 6 a.m. in the Eastern Time Zone of the United States. LEARN MORE >

July 10 -- Webinar - Halcyon Software is hosting a session titled "How to Get Smart with Automation and get real ROI," presented by Donnie MacColl, the company's head of technical services. The session will examine customer experiences and the results of automating their System i environments. The event, which originates in England, begins at 6 a.m. in the Eastern Time Zone of the United States. LEARN MORE >

July 11 -- Webinar - An online chat session pertaining to data-driven Web programming using PHP and MySQL will be presented by Jon Paris and Mike Pavlak. The event is hosted by iSociety and is scheduled to begin at noon CDT. LEARN MORE >

July 11 -- Webcast - A session pertaining to SugarCRM, the commercial open source customer relationship management software is being presented by Ed Kietlinski, a solutions consultant for Zend Technologies. Topics of discussion include the importance of open-source applications and the flexibility and cost effectiveness of Zend's PHP along with SugarCRM. This session is not specifically tailored to System i users. The event begins at 9 a.m. PDT. LEARN MORE >

July 16 -- San Francisco, California -- ASNA, iSeries Modernization Technical Seminar. Unlock, extend, and leverage the value of your iSeries to enable business change! This one day iSeries modernization event introduces you to Web Services expands the definition of modernization unravels SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) while explaining how you can use your team's skills to take advantage of all of the benefits of these new technologies. LEARN MORE >

July 16 -- Irvine, California - The annual one-day OCEAN Technical Conference will include technical sessions by Bob Cozzi, Bob Tipton, Trevor Perry, Alison Butterill, Scott Klement and others. Traditional RPG developer and infrastructure classes are on the agenda and there will be sessions on new technology and development approaches as well. Reservations before July 1 are eligible for a discount price. The event also includes a Vendor Expo. It will be held at the Hyatt Regency. LEARN MORE >