Nomination Process for iSeries Innovation Awards Opens

by Dan Burger

Some companies grow by virtue of their IT departments looking beyond current circumstances and discovering better methods for achieving company-wide success. Such achievements often go unrecognized, but IBM and COMMON are working together to change that by building an award program that puts the spotlight on forward-thinking IT projects that combine technical advancements and business enhancements. Now in its second year, the IBM eServer iSeries Innovation Awards are open for nominations.

To qualify, organizations with an AS/400, iSeries, or i5 and an OS/400-based solution must be identifiable as an end-user (ISVs are not eligible) . You also have to make a solid case for enhancing the business with whatever solution you nominate. Nominations may originate from within an iSeries shop and come from the IT staff itself or from an ISV with a noteworthy customer that they want to hold up as an example.

The nomination process has begun and it will remain open through December 30, 2005. To submit a nomination or to get additional information, including nomination guidelines, visit the awards site at https://www-926.ibm.com/events/iseries/iseriesawards06.nsf/$StaticContent/Welcome.

IBM and COMMON will present awards in five categories: Application Deployment, Business Resiliency, Infrastructure Simplification, i5/OS Focus, and Education Excellence. Each winner will be announced at the iSeries Innovation Award banquet, which will be held at the Spring 2006 COMMON Conference and Expo in Minneapolis. Each will receive a custom-designed crystal award, a one-year COMMON membership, five complimentary registrations to the COMMON conference, and one complimentary registration to COMMON IT Executive conference (which will be held at the Fall COMMON conference).

The Application Deployment Award recognizes the innovative deployment of industry and business applications or custom applications--including RPG, COBOL, Java, and other custom solutions.

The Business Resiliency Award focuses on business continuity and resiliency. Included in this category are high availability, security and compliance, and business-protection solutions.

The Infrastructure Simplification Award will be presented to an organization that demonstrates cost-effective server management, as well as application integration, capacity on demand, and overall IT simplification solutions deployed on an iSeries system(s) supporting multiple operating environments such as i5/OS, Linux, AIX, and Windows.

The i5/OS Focus Award is reserved for the organization that best demonstrates innovation while using i5/OS as the strategic and primary operating environment for running its entire business.

The Education Excellence Award is designated for an iSeries customer, a college, or a university that has demonstrated outstanding commitment to the iSeries community and provided ongoing education support for iSeries technology and solutions.

A judging team made up of three to five individuals will be assigned to each of the categories. The teams will consist of third-party analysts, IBM "thought leaders," and members of COMMON. Criteria for selection are based on demonstrating innovation, business value to the organization and its end users, industry best practices, and achievements that stand out from the others nominated in the category.

The first iSeries Innovation Awards were presented at the Spring COMMON 2005 Conference in Chicago.

The Infrastructure Simplification Award went to GHY International, one of Canada's oldest privately held brokerage and international trade services companies. The team there consolidated multiple servers, application workloads, and operating systems onto two iSeries systems. Not only did the project pay for itself in nine months, it permitted the three-person IT staff to focus on adding value to the business rather than running the infrastructure, saving the company hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The consolidation effort began with 14 servers including Windows servers, Linux servers, and Domino on Windows NT. After the first year of running the system, GHY was 14 percent under budget with nearly $100,000 of savings that could be directly attributed to the simplification process on the iSeries platform.

The Industry Solutions Award was presented to U-Bix Konica Minolta, the largest office equipment company in New Zealand. It actually had two innovative projects based on the iSeries. "Project PDA" enabled U-Bix technicians on customer service calls to "talk" directly to the iSeries platform back in the home office using PDA devices with cellular modems to more easily log and track their work. This solution manages service calls and inventory, acknowledges job status, and ensures billing accuracy resulting in saved time, financial resources and increased productivity. "Project Sentinel" relied on the iSeries autonomic capabilities to allow U-Bix Konica Minolta to attach customers' copiers and printers directly to the iSeries and to detect issues before they become problems allowing the customer to avoid downtime and to save resources and time.

The Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising was the winner of the Invention Award. The project automated a paper-based process to allow employers to post job openings that can be reviewed by more than 20,000 graduates over the Web, freeing staff time and reducing posting errors. The implementation included application infrastructure and design, database consolidation and access, and security and integration capabilities. LANSA and Domino applications were instrumental in this project. The Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising is a two-year accredited, private college with campuses in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, and Orange County, California.

The Insurance Award was presented to Kingland Systems, a company that provides business-critical services to leading financial institutions such as the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the Boston Options Exchange, National Financial, and the American Stock Exchange. The high availability implementation, and practices associated with switching between systems, resulted in only 20 minutes unplanned down time over four years, a proven record of 99.999 percent availability. In addition, planned downtime is limited to minutes each month due to the ability to rapidly switch services between geographically separated systems using a microwave system backed up by telco fiber, Lakeview Technology, and the iSeries system support in the data centers.

The Intellectual Award was won by ScottKlement.com, a Web site that contains tutorials and open source software. This project demonstrated savings in both cost and time as hundreds of iSeries customers reference it to gain information about the e-business world without additional software purchases.