Lab Services and Training Available for Power Systems Shops
September 20, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
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You want to adopt IBM‘s latest server technologies to replace your aging systems, but you are not too sure where to start? You want to talk to some techies with real-world implementation services instead of a salesperson itching to make a sale? Well, Big Blue has a deal for you called Systems Lab Services and Training. In announcement letter 610-042, the somewhat bizarrely named service is aimed at companies that want to deploy specific Power Systems technologies on Power7 servers and who just want to get some help getting together a plan to stand up these products without going all the way with Global Services and having IBM do all the planning and installation. The Systems Lab Services and Training offering is a fee-based consulting engagement, of course. After a special sales rep called an “opportunity manager” comes in to sniff out what kind of work you need IBM’s techies to do, IBM can create a statement of work and get you moving. One possible first step is to do what is called SWOT analysis, which is a business analysis that looks at your company’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, and then aligns the IT plan to the business plan. (This is sometimes erroneously called SWAT analysis.) IBM’s experts bring together line-of-business managers, the IT team, IBM’s account reps and business partners, and they get it all out there in the open during a four-day session. After that, IBM and the IT shop cooks up a strategic IT plan. The Systems Lab Services and Training staff, which actually develops IBM’s Power Systems technologies, can help you implement Advanced Copy Services for PowerHA on the IBM i platform; help you install and get up to speed on the Systems Director tools for Power Systems, allowing you to better manage power consumption and capacity; implement the PowerVM hypervisor and the Virtual I/O Server on IBM i platforms; do performance tuning for RPG, Java, and SQL programs; create a plan to modernize your legacy applications (and presumably not just using IBM’s own tools); implement Linux on Power-based servers; implement SAP ERP software on IBM i; install DB2 Web Query database query tools; come up with a server consolidation and virtualization plan; and help move you into the cloud if that is where you want to go. Systems Lab Services and Training became available on August 27. Prices were not, of course, announced. Global Services rarely nails down a price. RELATED STORIES i Shops Get Some Power Rewards Action, Finally Global Services Offers i5/OS V6R1 Migration Help
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