Dan Burger
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OCEAN Tech Conference Gains Audience
July 28, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreThe opportunity to attend a local IBM i training and education conference only comes around once a year in Southern California. IBM i shops know it and they take advantage. Nearly 200 IBM i advocates gathered at the National University facilities in Costa Mesa earlier this month, the largest attendance in recent years. The OCEAN user group, based in Orange County, California, hosted the event. OCEAN is one of the largest IBM i user groups in the United States and by far the largest west of the Mississippi River.
The 2014 technical conference was expanded to a three-day affair after
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Small IBM i Shops Find Simple, Inexpensive Reporting Options
July 14, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreWhat the young programmer learns usually follows him deep into his career. An example that comes to mind is query and report. Most programmers learned how to do this with IBM‘s Query/400, which was a fine product in its day, and is still immensely popular. But familiarity breeds content for many programmers. Unfortunately that’s not true for end users. Generating reports with Query/400 has its limits and most companies exceeded those limits years ago.
Even the small businesses that make up 80 percent of the IBM i community have hit the wall. They are mostly short on staff and
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What You Don’t Know About SQL Won’t Hurt You
July 14, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreNot all IBM i programmers speak SQL. It’s not even close, but it is, by most accounts a growing number. You don’t have to look under rocks to find programmers focused on leveraging SQL whether they are building applications for the Web or for green screens. This new product from Cozzi Productions, called Query File, should catch the attention of programmers regardless of their SQL skill level. It’s sort of a two-trick pony. One trick is for the people who know Query/400, but are strangers to SQL. The other trick is for those who know SQL but are pretty
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IBM i Community-Minded Planning
July 14, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreThere will be IBM midrange shops hiring entry-level employees this year. And there will be shops wondering where they will find these folks. Finding entry-level workers with the right mix of technology skills (that includes IBM i) is not as simple as buying a gallon of milk at the Piggly Wiggly.
Anan Ayyad, a student from Moraine Valley College, won the Student Innovation Award at the COMMON Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida, in May.
One place you can shop for talent is the COMMON Fall Conference October 27-29 in Indianapolis, Indiana. The plan, according to Laura Ubelhor, is to bring
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UCG Grows BaaS Biz with VAULT400
July 8, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreCloud-based backup and recovery services and remote hardware for disaster recovery and high availability continues to attract IBM midrange shops and United Computer Group has become a trusted partner with many of them. Last week, the Cleveland, Ohio-based company announced two more companies that have decided to contract with UCG for what is being referred to as backup as a service, or BaaS.
Carswell, a provider of information services for legal, tax, finance, and human resource professionals based in Canada, and the city of San Ramon, California, are the latest in a string of organizations choosing to work with UCG.
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UCG Grows BaaS Biz with VAULT400
July 8, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreCloud-based backup and recovery services and remote hardware for disaster recovery and high availability continues to attract IBM midrange shops and United Computer Group has become a trusted partner with many of them. Last week, the Cleveland, Ohio-based company announced two more companies that have decided to contract with UCG for what is being referred to as backup as a service, or BaaS.
Carswell, a provider of information services for legal, tax, finance, and human resource professionals based in Canada, and the city of San Ramon, California, are the latest in a string of organizations choosing to work with UCG.
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HelpSystems Grows With RJS And Coglin Mill Acquisitions
July 7, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreHelpSystems has picked up two more IBM i independent software vendors to add to its product portfolio. Last week, the acquiring minds at HelpSystems added document management software company RJS Software and the data warehousing product from Coglin Mill into its product ShowCase, which already includes systems automation, security, and business intelligence software.
I estimate the RJS customer base is approximately 1,500. Coglin Mill’s customer count is maybe 150. With HelpSystems’ worldwide customer base at 8,800 before these acquisitions, it seems likely that the company will top more than 10,000 customers. Around 75 percent of those customers are considered IBM
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Mountains Of Data Bring Recovery Issues
July 7, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreIf IBM pushed any harder on promoting “The Cloud,” it would rain for 40 days and 40 nights. Investments have been made in technologies such as PowerVM, SmartCloud management products, and Live Partition Mobility. And you can’t undervalue the investments from the managed service providers (MSPs) and the independent software vendors (ISVs).
“We see a revenue shift from the traditional buy/sell business to ‘the cloud’ and managed services,” says Jim Kandrac, who makes his living selling cloud-based backup and recovery services and remote hardware for disaster recovery and high availability. Kandrac’s business model relies a combination of IBM Power Systems
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Modernization Redbook: The Time Has Come
July 7, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreI’d like to tell you Modernizing IBM i Applications from the Database up to the User Interface and Everything in Between is on the IT Jungle Best Seller List. But we don’t have a best seller list and if IBM knew how many of these Rebooks were being downloaded, it’s against Big Blue’s better judgment to release such information.
You’ve heard about this Redbook before if you are a regular reader of The Four Hundred. It was a monumental effort that was first released as a Draft Redbook (Danger: Typographical errors and other bugs have yet to be thoroughly
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ERP Investments Rising, Complexity Waits In The Shadows
June 16, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreEnterprise resource planning systems are the good, the bad, and the ugly of business computing. The benefits of a smooth-running system with integration throughout the organization are significant when compared to faulty or non-existent ERP. The marginally successful and complete failures are legendary. It’s the classic risk-reward scenario. A recent report by Computer Economics shows companies investing in ERP at a rate that tops all other enterprise software. What does that tell you? The risk is worth the reward?
There are huge challenges involved whether companies are choosing to enhance existing systems, rip and replace those systems, or even implement