Dan Burger
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IBM i Innovators To Gather In Minneapolis
June 2, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreInnovators earn their reputations by making things happen. They not only succeed at knocking down walls that hold back business, they pursue ideas that lead to results. Enterprise IT is a great proving ground. Sometimes it seems like a fairy tale of overnight success, but seldom, if ever, is that true. To find innovation in IBM i shops, check the attendance sheet at the RPG & DB2 Summit. People there are working for companies that understand how innovation happens.
The next Summit is scheduled for September 30 through October 2 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was announced last week that
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IBM’s Investments In China Threatened?
June 2, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreA published report in Bloomberg News May 27 described IBM as in a problematic position with the Chinese government. At risk are the large server contracts Big Blue has within the banking industry. According to Bloomberg, the Chinese government may force state-owned banks to remove IBM servers because of a perceived threat to national financial security. The report cites “people familiar with the matter” pointing the finger at the intensifying dispute between the United States and China stemming from allegations of spying.
This unfolding drama involving IBM was revealed a week after five Chinese military officers were indicted by
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Baker College: Learning IBM i At A Distance
June 2, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreOnline education may not be ready to replace the classroom experience, but the line between virtual and real continues to fade. I’ve been wondering how this applies to IBM i education at the collegiate level. At last count, there were fewer than 100 colleges in the United States with a curriculum that included one or more classes that even mentioned IBM i. Many of the instructors say those classes are on life support due to small enrollment and college administrators who don’t believe the i is relevant to students being trained in computer science in 2014.
There is a need
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Skills, IBM i, Power8, And The Gathering Of Clouds
May 27, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreThe problem-solving approach to IT, with its emphasis on services, is the new face of IBM. It’s not exactly new, but the strategy of making this more than a slogan takes time as well as the enthusiastic buy-in of the business partner channel, which has always had a hardware-powered business model since the dawn of enterprise computing. I hear a lot of people mumbling that it takes hardware to run software, but business solutions are more closely associated with skills.
Skills matter more than the speeds and feeds of any system. On one level the system is a commodity.
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IBM i Finds A Place In The Cloud
May 27, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreThe IBM cloud game plan has a three-pronged strategy. It involves building its own private clouds and filling them with customers who appreciate the solid infrastructure and the services that IBM brings to the table. It is also developing a robust business model of being an infrastructure provider to business partners that are eager to create their own cloud business models. The third prong is a mix of private and public cloud options, operating systems, and virtualized infrastructure, which comes under the heading of hybrid cloud.
IBM i tends to be a niche in the big picture, just as we
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IBM Has No Retirement Party Planned For Tape
May 27, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreThere’s nothing heavier than the burden of a great legacy. Instead of continued expectations, the predominant bias is to push aside proven products for newer, flashier, must-be-better replacements. Magnetic tape storage is one of those products that proves what’s old is actually new. If you know someone who believes tape has reached the end of its capacity, bet them a cheeseburger and a beer that it hasn’t.
Few people know this better than Mark Lantz, manager of exploratory tape storage technologies at IBM‘s research facilities in Zurich, Switzerland. He will show you a deeply researched feasibility of tape roadmap
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Big Data Accelerates 2013 Software Market; IBM Absent From Top Spots
May 27, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreAre we there yet? The year-long trek that determines whether the software market gained or lost in 2013 is over. And the trip gets two thumbs up for the gains made. However, IBM was locked out of the leader position in all of the software categories.
The worldwide software market grew 5.5 percent during 2013, rocking and rolling to a total market size of $369 billion, according to the numbers crunchers at IDC. According to the paid observers at IDC, Europe’s economic recovery and a better than predicted outcome in the US, lifted software revenue past its high water
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Profound UI 5 Expands What i Can Do
May 20, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreRPG development teams are being pushed to their limits as the scope of development projects expands with a greater emphasis on Web and mobile. Time is a great teacher, but there never seems to be enough time to meet the demands. Profound Logic, an IBM i application tool vendor with a warehouse full of development experience gained during years of application development and modernization projects, is on the hunt to keep RPG developers ahead of the demands.
The newest in a long line of enhancements that support RPG Open Access and “top down” RPG programming are aimed at simplifying
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ARCAD Integrates Source Code Management in RTC
May 20, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreIBM Rational Team Concert, the collaborative change management software, has added an IBM i component to its capabilities that should gain the attention of IBM i shops that previously were displeased with how the IBM i development environment was not treated equally within RTC. The change comes in the form of integration with ARCAD Skipper software, which brings source code management under the RTC umbrella.
“Except for some very large IBM i customers, the IBM i customer base has not embraced Rational Team Concert (RTC),” says ARCAD CEO Philippe Magne. “That was because IBM i source code management was not
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Profound UI 5 Expands What i Can Do
May 20, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreRPG development teams are being pushed to their limits as the scope of development projects expands with a greater emphasis on Web and mobile. Time is a great teacher, but there never seems to be enough time to meet the demands. Profound Logic, an IBM i application tool vendor with a warehouse full of development experience gained during years of application development and modernization projects, is on the hunt to keep RPG developers ahead of the demands.
The newest in a long line of enhancements that support RPG Open Access and “top down” RPG programming are aimed at simplifying