| Editor: | Alex Woodie | Managing Editor: | Shannon Pastore | |
| Contributing Editors: | Joe Hertvik | |||
| Timothy Prickett Morgan | ||||
| Shannon O'Donnell | ||||
| Dan Burger |
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Volume 2, Number 1, sponsored by:LXI Corp. RJS Software Systems, Inc. SoftLanding Systems COMMON Tramenco
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LANSA 9.1 Targets Windows Functionality SSA GT to Resell Logility's Supply Chain Software |
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Well, you made it through another year, and you're looking
forward to 2002. The year 2001 was a tough one for many of
us. The war on terrorism and the national recession have caused
many companies to take a fresh look at their operations, in
the IT department as well as every other aspect of the business.
Anticipating business trends and taking proactive steps to
deal with them can help you adapt to industry changes on your
own terms. To that end, the editors at Guild Companies recently
polled top iSeries experts and industry sources to get their
predictions and ruminations on what 2002 has in store for the
iSeries, so that you'll know what's coming.
First, Executive Managing Editor Dan Burger speaks with John Earl,
chief technology officer and vice president of PowerTech,
about the state of security in business computing. Next, Dan Powers,
IBM's worldwide vice president of Linux sales, answers
Editor Alex Woodie's questions about Linux on iSeries. Then, read
iSeries consultant Al Barsa's insider views on the industry,
followed by an interview with LANSA's vice president of business development,
Bill Bejamin. Putting a wrap on these early 2002 predictions is Midrange
Server's publisher--and industry bellweather--Timothy Prickett Morgan. See
what he has to say, and remember that you read it here first! But before
we get into the predictions, a message from one of our sponsors:
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Now, back to the 2002 predictions: A Worldwide LAN: An Interview with John Earl by Dan Burger Are you expecting the year ahead to put security issues in the spotlight? I expect another strong year for security software. People are paying more attention to security in their organizations. As we get more and more networked in our organizations, it just gets more and more important. A lot of folks have already realized that, but a lot of folks are still catching up. This is especially true as it relates to connectivity. Who are you connected to? And whom are they connected to? What the Internet has done is put us all in a local area network with every computer on the whole freakin' planet. And when people begin to realize the number of people who potentially have access to their networks or their laptops or whatever, they start to get a better feel for what security is all about. How will this play out for IT managers in iSeries and AS/400 shops? I see network access control as a big item in 2002. Also, there will be an emphasis on basic tools that can provide accurate, up-to-the-minute, insightful data. If somebody is whacking away at my FTP server and trying to get into my AS/400, I want to know about it the first time he hits the box. I don't want to read about it in a summary report a week later. Real-time information will play a bigger role when it comes to security. Are we going to hear about incidents of hacking into the iSeries and AS/400? I know that it's happened already. It's happening right now. The question is, when is one of these incidents going to go public in a big way? It could happen at any time. There are security breeches all the time. But companies tend to not talk about them, and people who are in security tend to not talk about them. Security professionals will talk in abstract terms how a security breech could be realized, and do it in such a way that systems administrators can protect themselves. The 13-year-old hacker out on the Internet doesn't worry me nearly as much as the unemployed Belarusian nuclear physicist with access to a computer. He's way smarter than I am, and he also has the ability to get to the same sites that I get to. To that extent, risk is going to increase. What are you expecting people to do to combat security risks? The main thing is providing better access control. Next, I'd look for more use of exit-point software and more auditing. Right now, I don't think we have a lot of AS/400 shops where people even casually watch the system and could tell a week or two later whether they've been attacked or even if someone has attempted to attack. As organizations become more security conscious, there will be more people paying attention to auditing. Certainly, network exit points and exit programs are a big issue. Big Blue Is Seeing Penguins: An Interview with Dan Powers by Alex Woodie How has Linux progressed on the iSeries thus far? We've had 400 sign-ups so far for the Linux Test Drive. They have access to a virtual Linux server. And 50 customers have started to use Linux in their shops. They're not just playing around with it, but loading up applications and doing some consolidation. They're finding, from an iSeries perspective, that they can reduce cost and complexity. They've always known the iSeries is a mainframe-class server that's easy to mange. How will the adoption of Linux among iSeries shops move forward in 2002? I think iSeries [Linux adoption] will be similar to what happened to zSeries. It will progress through three phases: running Web servers, applications servers, firewalls, and file- and print-sharing; starting to hook up Web servers to a database, running on OS/400; and the third wave would be critical systems. What stage of Linux adoption is the zSeries in right now? The second phase. We're waiting for a few ISVs to port their software, such as financial packages. What sort of iSeries shop will be the first to put Linux to work on the iSeries? It would depend on the business. If you're already an iSeries customer and have some of the applications running under OS/400 already, it probably wouldn't make sense to have them running under Linux. They're running perfectly, so why do it? The best thing about the Linux market is that the Unix marketplace is very wide. It's very easy to move a Unix application to Linux. "What operation system should I support with my software?" is always a question with developers. It's a cost to develop and test for an operating system. The one you choose is what has the biggest market share in the world. Windows is big--Solaris and AIX are big. The S/390 and AS/400 don't always get the latest and greatest applications. Linux is the fastest growing. In the small to midsize business space, Linux becomes critical. Forty-eight percent of Linux servers are installed at SMBs. That's a tremendous opportunity for iSeries. The statistics we've been hearing are that, by 2005, the SMBs--those with less than 1,000 employees--will account for greater than 50 percent of server shipments worldwide. It's just an unbelievable opportunity. Sounding Off: An Interview with Al Barsa by Alex Woodie How do you think the iSeries will compete in the computer market in 2002? If we look at how the '400 did in the market this year, basically the entire computer market sucked wind, except for iSeries and zSeries. But there are a lot of people who are trying to leave the '400 that are getting burned. I see this all the time. They're back- and front-ending their applications, but they just don't succeed when they get there. What are iSeries shops going to be spending their money on in 2002? They're spending more money on disaster planning. They're looking at their disaster-recovery plans. But people are responding with inappropriate actions, small firms that don't need a hot site taking hot site contracts. A big waste of money. People are firming up what they have. Linux is the big wild card. IBM is betting on it, and I'm not sure that's a good bet. They were betting the Department of Justice was going to disembowel Microsoft. The DoJ wussed. What future does Linux have on the iSeries? I think the AS/400 people are being very reticent to invest in Linux. IBM doesn't realize why. IBM is bringing out too much stuff. It's really neat, but it turns out to be vaporware. IBM has done a great job selling vaporware. Look at CODE400. They're giving it away, and nobody is using it. People are being cheap right now. That may turn around, if business starts to get better. If I were to make my guess, I'd say people investing in their core applications. Nobody has done any investing in their core applications for years now. What about the ERP vendors? Have you heard anything about IBM developing its own CRM package? I think the ERP vendors are in trouble. J.D. Edwards invested heavily in OneWorld, and the marketplace came back and said "yuck." I don't see anything to [the IBM CRM rumor]. It raises its ugly head once a year. If there were something to it, we'd know. The industry can't keep a secret. What are your thoughts on OS/400 V5R2? V5R2 is a lesser issue than when you announce new hardware, where you can run the risk of a market stall. The fact of the matter is, in this marketspace, if you wait for latest and greatest, you'll never buy. Do you think IBM will shore up iSeries marketing in 2002? No. IBM is not going to start marketing the box. IBM is delusional in telling the world, "All you want to do is buy the eServer." IBM is trying to homogenize the boxes to make them all look alike. I think they're out of their mind. But they think I'm out of my mind, so fair is fair. 2002 Tech Parade: An Interview with Bill Benjamin by Alex Woodie What technology is going to receive the most attention in 2002? Web services is definitely going to be the big buzzword. ASP, wireless, Java, you name it. Web services is just another one of those things where there's business value for a segment, but it's not going to change the world. The market for application-to-application software, the B2B direct market. I'll call it "beyond the browser"--rather than making customers enter orders in a browser, to let them automatically send their orders out of their ERP system into your ERP system. What is the most promising new technology that most iSeries shops will never use in 2002? Hmmm...logical partitioning. I feel that's such an amazing technology, but so few customers are using it. I do pricing at LANSA, and I'm getting hardly any questions about LPAR. It's a weird year. It's very hard to predict any kind of trend. Companies have retrenched. They're not making big investments in new technology for technology's sake. They're investing in their core systems, and extending them where they have to. What do you see happening to ISVs' ability to remain as OS/400-only vendors? It's a sad story; they all want to, but they can't. It's hard enough selling software these days, but to have to overcome the predisposition to Unix or Windows--forget it. I've talked to vendors who say, "We don't want to do this, but we have to." Reading Ahead: An Interview with Timothy Prickett Morgan by Alex Woodie What's up with iSeries and OS/400 development? That's an easy one. IBM will debut the new iSeries "Regatta" servers on July 23, 2002. The new machines will debut running OS/400 V5R2 and will sport from four to 32 of IBM's 1.1 GHz and 1.3 GHz Power4 processors. Slower clock speeds also may be available, to better flesh out the iSeries line. Faster processors might be available as well, if IBM gets better yield on new chip process technologies. How do you see the overall economy affecting IT planning in the year ahead? Now that's a more difficult prediction. Everything will slow down a little in 2002, and not necessarily in ways that are unproductive. Companies--having expended so much energy worrying about dot-coms in 1997, 1998, and early 1999, and having spent so much money on Web development to get themselves to the Internet--are going to take a step back and really analyze what they need to do and when they should spend the money to do it. The irrational exuberance of the late 1990s was waning in 2000, and was all but extinguished during the latter half of 2001. Remember that the AS/400 launch preceded a mild recession in the late 1980s, and the product line had its best year during the 1991 recession. Bad times are often good for the OS/400 platform. Companies take a more conservative approach in tough times, and they often take a longer view on strategic investments, while at the same time looking for short-term cost savings. A hybrid OS/400-Windows or OS/400-Linux server is the right kind of platform for many small and midsize businesses, and with the loud droning from the Internet subsiding, maybe more companies, with the help of IBM and its OS/400 platform resellers and software providers, will realize this. Of course, this is as much a hope as it is a prediction.
LANSA 9.1 Targets Windows Functionality by Alex Woodie
LANSA has recently announced the release of LANSA
Version 9.1, the latest suite of development tools from the
Oak Brook, Illinois, software company. LANSA's fourth-generation
language (4GL) development environment allows programmers to
take advantage of the new technologies that LANSA's research
and development department build into the development tools,
without necessarily learning all the ins and outs of the new
technologies, and not being tied to them either.
Programmers can have their pick of several new technologies
LANSA built into Version 9.1, including XHTML, Web services
protocols, and a new Visual LANSA development framework.
Additionally, LANSA changed the names of several of the
development tools, dropped some, and added others. LANSA
also debuted new installation programs and a new technical
support Web site, and made literally hundreds of tweaks to
keep its software current with development standards and up
to customer expectations.
Perhaps Visual LANSA, the company's PC-based development
environment that most closely resembles traditional Microsoft
Windows development tools--but which shares the basic LANSA
repository and markup language that underlie all of LANSA's
products--saw the most changes with this release.
The enhancements in this release bolster LANSA's intention
to make Visual LANSA the strategic LANSA development tool,
said Bill Benjamin, LANSA's vice president of product development.
"Visual LANSA is the development environment of the future with
us," Benjamin said. "There are things that you can do with Visual
LANSA that you can't do in LANSA for the Web, because Visual
LANSA is object-oriented and event-driven."
First-time LANSA programmers are expected to become productive
more quickly when they use Visual LANSA Framework, a new
component that provides the basic application structure for a
Visual LANSA application. New and seasoned LANSA programmers
alike might find the new Visual Modeler, a new component that
provides a graphical view of files, fields, and their
relationships to each other, a handy way to get immediate
feedback on how changes affect the database.
Visual LANSA now includes the latest Microsoft C/C++ compilers,
which are faster than the old Watcom complier and make debugging
easier, the company says. Additionally, the company says it
reduced the size of compiled components, which means Visual
LANSA applications use less memory and therefore run faster.
Version 9.1 also brings changes to LANSA for the Web. In addition
to supporting XHTML, which is a hybrid of XML and HTML and makes
it easier to display the same GUI regardless of the client platform,
LANSA is shipping a new IIS plug-in with this release. The IIS
plug-in gives users of LANSA for the Web the option of deploying
their Web server using Microsoft software, instead of WebSphere or
other Java-based Web servers, depending on their preference.
LANSA added the IIS plug-in because of heavy requests from its
user-base for more Windows development tools and Windows
deployment options. Visual LANSA, the company's PC-based
development environment, is also in line for expanded Microsoft
.NET technologies, as well as new J2EE capabilities, with the
release of LANSA Version 10.0 later this year.
"We've really reached parity now," Benjamin said. "Everything
we've done comes out in both iSeries and Windows. Now we are
truly an iSeries and Windows vendor."
Benjamin said the company is working on developing its Unix
business as well. "There are lots of tool vendors that do
Windows and Unix well but don't do iSeries, Windows, and Unix
well," he said. "We're kind of in a transition, building on
the success we've had with the iSeries and branching elsewhere.
There really isn't anybody else, in terms of the heterogeneous
environments."
The newest addition to the LANSA family, LANSA Integrator, is
the company's answer to its customers' application and B2B
integration needs. First announced at the fall 2001 COMMON
conference in Minneapolis, LANSA Integrator relies on Java and
XML technology to integrate LANSA applications with applications
on other platforms.
Other enhancements were made to LANSA Open and LANSA Client,
including the bundling of Crystal Reports 8.5 with LANSA Client.
LANSA has also added a new support section to its Web site
(www.lansa.com/support)
to help users with technical questions about LANSA development tools.
The following name changes will take effect for LANSA Version 9.1
and beyond:
* LANSA for the iSeries becomes LANSA for iSeries
LANSA Version 9.1 becomes generally available this month. For more
information, go to www.lansa.com.
Join us in Music City, USA, for the next COMMON Conference
& Expo. We'll be "Topping the Charts" at the Opryland Hotel
in Nashville, Tennessee, with the best in IT education. Over
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Also, all registrants who make their Opryland Hotel reservations
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You'll want to be staying in Opryland, so reserve your hotel room
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SSA GT to Resell Logility's Supply Chain Software
by Alex Woodie
SSA Global Technologies announced in December that
it would begin reselling Logility's supply chain
planning and execution software as its own. The new offering,
called BPCS Collaborative Commerce powered by Logility, is
designed to help SSA GT's customers to develop collaborative
trading communities with their business partners and to
manage supply chain operations.
The OEM agreement involves the Logility Voyager Solutions
suite, a collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment
(CPFR) suite that consists of six separate modules.
Collaborative Commerce powered by Logility should get the
attention of BPCS users in the manufacturing and distribution
sectors, because it offers a combination of supply chain
inventory management and demand forecasting.
Here's a rundown on the various components and capabilities
of Logility's Voyager Solutions Suite:
* Value Chain Collaboration is composed of four subset
applications--Voyager Collaborate, Voyager Fulfill, Voyager
Select, and i-Community--that are designed to enable trading
partners to collaboratively manage and execute direct material
procurement and fulfillment via the Internet.
* Supply Chain Event Management includes the Voyager Navigate
application. Its purpose is to help trading partners monitor
and control supply chain processes on an exception basis.
* Value Chain Strategy, together with the Value Chain Designer,
presents global views of supply and demand chains, enabling
companies to make decisions about global sourcing and capital
expenditures.
* Demand Chain Planning is composed of five applications--Life
Cycle Planning, Demand Planning, Demand Chain Voyager, Event
Planning, and Inventory Planning modules--that assist companies
in improving demand forecast accuracy.
* Supply Chain Planning includes three industry modules--
Replenishment Planning, Manufacturing Planning, and Transportation
Planning--to help companies reduce lead times and optimize
manufacturing and transportation investments.
* Supply Chain Execution includes two modules--WarehousePRO and
Transportation Management--that help users manage inventory.
SSA GT, the company that was formed in 2000 after System Software
Associates filed for bankruptcy, owns all rights to BPCS, one of
the most popular ERP suites for OS/400. BPCS also runs on the
Hewlett-Packard HP 9000 server and, since January 2001, on
the Windows operating systems.
Logility develops and sells B2B e-commerce and supply chain
software for the mid-market sector. The Atlanta-based company
experienced double-digit revenue growth during the dot-com heyday
of the late 1990s and in early 2000, and has managed to remain one
of the few profitable enterprise software vendors since the air
was let out of the ERP balloon following Y2K. Logility has enjoyed
three consecutive quarters of profitability, according to its
November 19 earnings report. Logility's software runs on OS/400,
Unix, and Windows operating systems.
In the summer of 2000, Logility sealed an OEM deal with Great
Plains Software (which has since been acquired by Microsoft)
that was similar to its partnership with SSA GT. The deal included
integrating four Logility Voyager modules with Great Plains'
midmarket Windows-based ERP system, called eEnterprise. The
software is now marketed under the name Microsoft Great Plains
Supply Chain Series powered by Logility.
SSA GT's Collaborative Commerce powered by Logility is available
immediately. For more information, go to www.ssagt.com.
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High-Traffic Web Site Powered by the iSeries by Dan Burger
In the overall scheme of things, you don't find many companies
running Web sites on the iSeries. But Andin International,
a leading jewelry manufacturer, looked at such a proposition
as a challenge--not because it likes to buck the odds, but
because, when the idea was examined, there were many reasons
to go ahead, and no reason not to.
Frequently iSeries and AS/400 shops are stereotyped as
conservative and set in their ways. The impact of the Internet,
it is assumed, has yet to be fully appreciated by the OS/400
flock. Certainly the trash-talking by competitors, such as
Sun and Microsoft, has had an influence on the
perception of the iSeries as a Web server.
That's what makes the Andin International instance so
interesting. In early December, after operating just over
a month, the number of daily visitors to Andin's site,
Jewelry.com, grew from approximately 1,000 to more than
50,000. The holiday season is stunning for the jewelry trade
--a $50 billion market in the United States--so Andin wasn't
surprised by the amount of traffic on his site; in fact, next
season the company expects to reach more than a million
visitors per month.
Early in the discussions about how to build a Web site that
could handle this volume, , before any platform was chosen,
Andin was open to suggestions and invited several Web
application vendors to make presentations.
"We listened to dozens of proposals from companies that told
us IBM wasn't the way to go," said Ofer Azrielant,
chairman of Andin International. "They told us we needed to
run the site on Sun or Microsoft. In the end, we had confidence
that the eServer iSeries would deliver performance and reliability
for the high volume of traffic we expected on the site, while
allowing us to integrate our new systems with our existing
technology."
Andin's existing hardware included eight iSeries and AS/400
servers, spread out at several locations around the world.
The company purchased two additional iSeries machines in order
to be prepared for the processing power required by a high-volume
Web site.
Jewelry.com uses three iSeries boxes. A Model 820 with one CPU
is used as a staging environment, for testing, verifying, and
checking out new features. Two machines operate in the production
environment: A Model 270 with one CPU does the database services
work, and a Model 820 with one CPU operates as an application
server.
One of the reasons Andin executives chose the iSeries was "so
that every three months we wouldn't have to delve into the
infrastructure side again," said Kris Chronister, vice president
of marketing at Andin. Of course, the company could also rely on
its experienced staff of approximately 35 OS/400-skilled
technicians. Having the skill set in house played a big role in
the decision.
"The experience with IBM iSeries was a contributing factor," said
Andin's chief technical officer, Steve Passer. "But the number-one
reason was financial." The cost of purchasing a non-OS/400 platform,
including the database, and factoring in personnel and training
issues, tilted the balance sheet in favor of the iSeries.
Andin is a company that likes to roll its own software, so during
the planning stages there was debate over whether or not they
would develop the applications for Jewelry.com in-house. "We
compared the features of WebSphere out of the box with what we
would have to write custom," Passer said. "WebSphere saved us
about 40 days in development time. And since we didn't have much
time to spare, it made the choice fairly straightforward."
No one on Andin's IT staff had experience with WebSphere before
setting up Jewelry.com. "It's been one of the more straight-forward
platforms to adapt to," Passer said of WebSphere. Competitors
warned that WebSphere was more difficult to work with than some of
the other Web application servers. "I've worked with both WebSphere
and Dynamo before, and that is simply not true," Passer said. "We
are coming from a shop that has great iSeries talent. One guy
(described as the "King of Java") was able to jump in and learn
the WebSphere Commerce Suite with no additional hard-core training."
The issue of maxing out on capacity was faced early on. Passer said
stress tests were performed at the IBM iSeries headquarters, in
Rochester, Minnesota. From that, it was determined that adding a
second processor would be "an easy fix." The next round of increasing
capacity is more complicated. "After two CPUs in the iSeries," Passer
explained, "the application server has too much overhead and doesn't
really offer a big advantage over multiple application server
instances. In all cases, it means more CPUs, but there are major
software issues one gets bogged down with."
Jewelry.com's system is comfortably supporting the current traffic
spikes, but the intention is to keep growing. Eventually the system
will reach the point that it is no longer running optimally. The
debate over whether to add more CPUs or more app servers is on the
table now, with an eye toward the next holiday season.
The LXI Lights Out solution is designed to help you streamline and
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* Scheduling jobs on local or remote systems with LXIscheduler.
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New ShowCase Release Increases Usability by Alex Woodie
ShowCase has released a new version of its STRATEGY
suite of OS/400-based data warehousing and business intelligence
software that includes several new features geared toward
making it easier to install and more productive to users.
STRATEGY 4.5 features several enhancements to Enterprise
Reporting, one of the desktop components of STRATEGY that
allows people to distribute reports to their coworkers over
the Web. Enterprise Reporting can be coupled with the AS/400-
or iSeries-based STRATEGY data warehouse or used in conjunction
with other company databases.
Before Version 4.5, Enterprise Reporting was an applet that
required downloading from the Internet or a company intranet,
which can be slow. With this release, ShowCase has reengineered
Enterprise Reporting into a true Java-based thin-client
application that resides permanently on the client's desktop
and eliminates repeated downloading. Additionally, ShowCase
added content management capabilities to Enterprise Reporting
for the first time.
ShowCase also included new integration capabilities for companies
using STRATEGY with ERP systems and non-DB2 data stores. Users of
J.D. Edwards' ERP applications--WorldSoftware and OneWorld
--can now use the same set of user IDs and passwords to access the
ERP applications and STRATEGY 4.5.
Furthermore, STRATEGY 4.5 features new data access support for
Oracle databases running on Windows NT, as well as for
Microsoft Excel and Access. STRATEGY already featured data
access and data consolidation support for the SQL Server and
Domino databases, and for Oracle databases running on AIX.
STRATEGY 4.5 started shipping December 31. For more information,
go to www.showcasecorp.com.
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News Briefs and Product Shorts
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The Training and Mentoring Company (Tramenco) is dedicated
to just one thing: Advancing your career by giving
you the skills you need to solve real-world business problems.
You get the best information from the world's leading
experts--Howard Arner, Kelly Conklin, Don Denoncourt,
Susan Gantner, Skip Marchesani, Glen Marchesani,
Shannon O'Donnell, Craig Pelke, and Richard Shaler.
Choose from a menu of training options to fit your
needs: onsite seminars, public seminars, mentoring,
consulting, books, CBTs, and Web-based training.
And make plans to attend the 2002 iSeries Connection
Conference, the multi-day, multi-track conference that
was the only sold-out iSeries training event this year,
co-sponsored by the Education Connection and Tramenco.
For more information about Tramenco's career enhancing
opportunities, call (800) 421-8031 or go to
www.tramenco.com.
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