Top OS/400 Stories from Around the Web

(IT Jungle) Like shadows cast by the early morning sun, the midrange market changes as time goes by. Take, for instance, a demographic snapshot from 10 years ago and compare it to another snapshot today. You might find it interesting to note how the small to mid size market compares to the enterprise market, and how globalization has left its mark on the number of data centers and the number of business locations indicated by each company. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) The distribution market segment quite possibly is the home of more IBM System i individual sales than any other single category of commerce. Overall that sector is a $4 trillion market in the United States and more than 250,000 companies compete. How many of those run on System i? Don't bother asking IBM about its proprietary information. However, most wholesale distributors will say 2008 has been a tough year. Success is much more difficult and those achieving it are admired for coming through in the clutch. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Complexity is not a word that marketing departments choose to use in their IT product descriptions without the word "reduced" in front of it. Customers often see things differently. For instance, it would be accurate to say installing the Power6-based blade servers and the Virtual I/O server that supports the i 6.1 operating system is somewhat of an enigma. Even those with experience in OS/400 installations and migration procedures are asking for help. READ MORE >

(ENTERPRISE SECURITY TODAY) Although he stopped short of actually saying, "What's good for IBM is good for the country," IBM CEO Sam Palmisano suggests that a smart economic road to recovery for the United States would include infrastructure upgrades in areas such as traffic management and electric grids. A combination of private and public investments in existing technology could lead to numerous projects that would be good for our economy while stimulating growth in industries such as transportation, energy, and health care. READ MORE >

(Fortune) Most technology companies have reputations for generating cash as opposed to carrying debt. IBM's business plan includes both, which makes it a bit of a lightning rod during an economic storm. Big Blue's strategy of borrowing money and lending it to customers who buy its products and services has worked well during times of easy credit. When credit gets tight, however, there is a greater potential for problems. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Tight credit is putting the squeeze on IT equipment leasing. I wouldn't go so far as to say IBM Global Financing is loosing its juice, but it's fair to say the equipment leasing business isn't as juicy as it once was. IBM customers and its resellers will attest to that. READ MORE >

(PC World) Seating your key people around a conference room desk is step number one in collaboration. If that's not possible, for whatever reason, there's always the telephone, a great collaboration tool. Let's get beyond the rudimentary though and talk about the benefits of expanded collaboration strategy. Let's look at IBM Lotus Notes/Domino and Microsoft Outlook/Exchange. READ MORE >

Vendor Announcements, Promotions, and Deals

(IT Jungle) One sure way of inducing programmers to use profanity is to give them the task of hard-coding tax law changes into the company's accounting system. Seems simple enough, when it's not your job. But after you find out how much time your programmers have spent on it, the investment in software that automates the job is money well spent. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) I've never heard of an organization with a shortage of data. What's frequently mentioned, though, is a shortage of useful data and its correlation to decision support. It's the extraction and analysis process--separating the wheat from the chaff--that stifles executive desires to raise their business IQ. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Spool files typically carry information that's on its way to a printer. But many organizations are trying to reduce their printer dependencies. I can think of a few good reasons for doing that. The alternative to cranking out paper reports is to reformat spool files into formats such as PDF, HTML, or Excel and distributing them via e-mail, fax, or posting to central servers. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Building castles in the clouds may sound like the dream world to some, but here's a company proving that it works just fine thank you very much. No, it's not Salesforce.com, but coincidentally that company does factor into this story about data integration tools and services. There are trends in the software as a service delivery method to indicate a growing demand. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) Document retrievers wanted. Must be fast, accurate, and able to work on short notice. Previous experience as a hunter/tracker required. Running shoes provided by company. This is document management in the non-digital world. You can do better. In fact, a workflow system actually flows when there's document scanning and content management software in the picture. READ MORE >

Redbooks, White Papers, and Other OS/400 Resources

(Quadrant) Justifying IT projects means demonstrating that the return on investment is both short and sweet. This white paper on paperless process management examines the cost benefits related to reduced use of paper and printers, the workflow efficiencies that result in reduced labor costs, and the savings gained by running a PPM system on existing hardware. READ MORE >

(RJS) Data integration between the System i and a PC can be painfully slow and loaded down with repetitive tasks. This Web page takes you to five customer success stories that reveal how each was able to remove integration barriers, work smarter, automate data conversion and delivery, and Web enable data. READ MORE >

(PowerTech) Many companies rely on security information and event management (SIEM) solutions to comply with security policies and mandated regulations. This paper discusses why SIEM solutions often offer limited coverage for the System i (AS/400), and emphasizes technical issues relevant to logging security data on the System i (AS/400). It also offers advice for developing real-time awareness of security events as they happen on the System i and provides information on integrating SIEM solutions. READ MORE >

(Oracle) The JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ERP software, which runs on i OS, as well as Unix, and Windows operating systems, has a new online "best practice center" for customers interested in developing a service oriented architecture using Oracle's Fusion middleware and other technologies. The portal site contains Webcasts, tutorials, technical articles, and blog postings. READ MORE >

Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings

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

November 13 -- Maryland Heights, Missouri - The Gateway/400 Group, a local user group in the Greater St. Louis area, is hosting a one-day educational session titled "Beyond the Basics with SQL," which will be presented by the well-known DB2 for i OS expert Skip Marchesani. This event is scheduled from 8:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. at the Graphic Communication Banquet Facility located at 105 Progress Parkway. RSVP by November 10. LEARN MORE >

November 13 -- Kent, Washington - The Pacific Midrange Systems Association meeting features two sessions. The first is PHP on System i, presented by Duncan Kenzie of Excel Systems, and the second pertains to recent IBM Power System announcements, presented by IBM's Mark Ruberry. The meeting begins at 11:30 a.m. LEARN MORE >

November 14 -- Kenosha, Wisconsin - The Third Annual Fall Conference will offer educational tracks on topics that include DB2, DB2 Web Query, RPG, and WDSc. Each track will provide a full day of sessions. A complete agenda is available online. This event is co-hosted by of the Wisconsin Midrange Computer Professional Association and Gateway Technical College. It's being held at the college located at 3520-30th Avenue. LEARN MORE >

November 18 -- Webinar - Improving query response times, especially for complex queries, is the reason people will be joining this online session presented by IBM's Tim McKinley. Tuning complex query performance associated with business intelligence is McKinley's expertise at the DB2 for i5/OS Center of Competency in Rochester, Minnesota. In this session he'll be discussing how materialized query tables can boost performance in operations such as aggregated data over one or more dimensions; joins and aggregates data over a group of tables; data from a commonly accessed subset of data; and repartitioned from a table, or part of a table, in a partitioned database environment. This one-hour presentation begins at 10 a.m. CST. LEARN MORE >

November 18 -- Lombard, Illinois - Backup and recovery, presented by Richard Dolewski a certified systems integration specialist and disaster recovery planner, will be the featured topic at the monthly meeting of the OMNI User Group. This session discussion will cover topics such as virtual tape, Wintel virtualization for DR, continuous data protection, high systems availability, electronic data vaulting, tape hardware advancements, and encryption techniques. Dolewski will also provide advice to consider when evaluating backup and security technology solutions. The meeting gets under way at 5 p.m., dinner is at 6, with Dolewski's presentation at approximately 6:45. The location is the Embassy Suites Hotel at 707 East Butterfield Road. LEARN MORE >

November 18 -- Norwalk, Connecticut - The Fairfield AS/400 Users Group monthly meeting topic is a review of the latest Power System i hardware and i 6.1 OS announcements. Also on the agenda is SNA moving to Enterprise Extender (V5R4 vs. i 6.1) and the program conversion planning required to move to i 6.1. Guest speaker is Tracy Smith, a certified senior consulting IT specialist with IBM. FASUG meetings are held at the Norwalk Inn and begin at 5:30 p.m. LEARN MORE >

November 18 -- Irving, Texas - Seven steps to eliminating paper, a paperless process management deployment, will be covered by Robert Graham in his presentation at the monthly meeting of the Metro Midrange Systems Association, a user group for the Dallas and Fort Worth metro areas. The event begins at 5:30 p.m. with dinner at 6 and Graham's presentation at 6:45. MMSA meetings are held at the Radisson Hotel DFW South. LEARN MORE >

November 18 -- Nashville, Tennessee - This meeting of the Tennessee IBM Mid-Range User Group will feature a presentation on IBM i integration with Windows, VMware, and IBM BladeCenter. The emphasis will be on using storage, networking, and virtualization technologies on System I and VMware to simplify the management of Windows environments. Guest speaker will be Keith Zblewski, an IBM technical specialist. The meeting will be held at the Holiday Inn Vanderbilt located at 2613 West End Avenue. It begins at 5:30 p.m. LEARN MORE >

November 19 -- Mississauga, Ontario - The IBM Power of i Tour, featuring Frank Soltis, chief scientist and the most popular IBM spokesperson in the System i community, and several other expert speakers, will be the highlight of the monthly meeting of the Toronto User Group. Additional speakers include PHP expert Erwin Earley; Kurt Rump, a Power Systems strategy consultant; and Randy Ruhlow, a high availability and systems management expert. This event begins at 4 p.m. and takes place at the Living Arts Centre. LEARN MORE >

November 19 -- Webinar - This session on Web-enabling existing 5250 applications with no changes to RPG, COBOL, or DDS files will feature BCD's WebSmart Presto. The presentation includes topics such as including menus, subfile, and single-record programs and window look-ups in your Web-enabled applications, configuration options for professional applications, the use of images, drop-down lists, and other graphical features, and incorporating Web-enabled applications with other Web apps and Web content using BCD's Nexus Portal. This is a technical session. It begins at 2 p.m. EST. LEARN MORE >

November 19 -- Woodbury, New York - The Long Island Systems Users Group monthly meeting topic will be a review of the latest IBM System i hardware announcements, the i 6.1 operating system, and the licensing and packaging options. Also on the agenda is a discussion of the communications update on SNA moving to Enterprise Extender. LISUG meetings are held at the Fox Hollow Inn and begin at 6 p.m. LEARN MORE >

November 20 -- Webinar - The V6R1 release of IBM DB2 for i includes a number of tools database administrators can use to handle typical, real-life situations. This session explores how someone wearing the "DBA hat" can use these System i Navigator tools. Guest speaker is Jim Flanagan, team leader for IBM's System i Navigator Database team. This event begins at noon CST. It's free to COMMON user group members. LEARN MORE >

November 21 -- Costa Mesa, California - A presentation on 5250 application modernization is the highlight of the regular monthly meeting of the OCEAN User Group. Guest speaker Eamon Musallam, a product specialist with LANSA, will discuss the importance of applications that can be accessed through a variety of interfaces and devices, and that easily integrate with other systems. This presentation will cover the latest application modernization trends, challenges, and technologies. The event begins at 6 p.m. at the IBM offices located at 3545 Harbor Boulevard. LEARN MORE >