Dan Burger
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Penton Media’s IBM i Sites Cease Publication
April 7, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read morePenton Media has discontinued its two digital publications for the IBM i community–iProDeveloper and Power IT Pro.
iProDeveloper was a website with technical content for developers on the IBM midrange systems known as the IBM i, System i, iSeries, and AS/400. Prior to the digital version of iProDeveloper, there was a printed magazine version previously titled System iNews, iSeries News, and News/400.
Power IT Pro was a website that expanded the IBM i technical content to include the Power Systems family that includes AIX and PureSystems.
Contributors to the two publications were informed of
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Engage The Brain At Toronto IBM i Tech Conference
April 7, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreThere are IBM midrange companies that strategize and even prioritize plans for strengthening their IT workforces with the intention of improving business processes and solving business problems. If you attend an event like the Toronto User Group‘s annual two-day technical conference April 24 and 25, you find people who work for those companies learning to use IBM i and Power Systems like its 2014 instead of 1994. If you are sitting on the sidelines, 20 years of IT innovation is a long time to be out of the game.
We all recognize the challenges presented by budget cuts, diminished
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Basic Plan, Minimal Requirements Lead To Surprising Results
March 31, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreWhen IT budgets are constrained and IT staffing is obligated to maintain existing infrastructure, the adoption of new technologies often relies on long-term and sometimes short-term cost savings. These are spelled out as return on investment (ROI) and often have implementations that are outsourced to software vendors, systems integrators, and consultants who can get the job done quickly and with as little disruption to the day-to-day business processes as possible. Trevor Perry spends most of his time in that tricky environment with one foot on the dock and the other in the canoe.
Perry has application modernization skills, whereas most
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Love Your Legacy, But Look To The Future
March 31, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreJust five years ago, the IBM midrange community–at least the 90 percent that operate businesses in the SMB market–responded to emerging technologies with a great deal of detachment. They stayed entrenched in tradition with little concern about living in a silo. They had their integration struggles and did their application maintenance, but figured they were still years away from needing an overhaul. And although each company is different, this generalization applies more than it doesn’t.
Have things changed all that much in five years? Are IBM i shops approaching the challenges posed by new technologies with the same detachment or
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Sleeping Habits of CIOs Revealed
March 31, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreWhat keeps CIOs up at night? Not surprisingly, it’s the same thing that keeps a lot of IT professionals up at night. Sleep only comes easily because you have worked 18 hours in a row trying to solve problems and implement solutions.
The answers, in this case, were provided during an IBM hosted audio-visual presentation billed as a Powercast. That’s Power as in Power Systems. This was the first Powercast, but won’t be the last.
The message delivery method was a virtual roundtable featuring three professionals: an innovative CIO of an organization that is technology savvy, a director of a
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IBM i Modernization Redbook A Must Read
March 31, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreTake a bow Tim Rowe. Rowe, the IBM i business architect for application development and systems management, just had a baby. Its name is the Modernize IBM i Applications from the Database up to the User Interface and Everything in Between Redbook. If you think the title is long, you should see the list of authors. A dozen names made the cover. It was released last week in draft Redbook form, which means it is still be edited and comments are being solicited.
When it is released with full Redbook status, it will be the biggest Redbook in IBM
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IBM i Mobile Apps Challenged By BYOD Management
March 17, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreFive C-level executives sit down to have a conversation about implementing mobile computing. Each one has his or her unique experiences. Some are under way with mobile projects, some are yet to begin, but have made mobile a priority. All are eager to share stories and compare notes on what has worked and what has not. And all of them come from companies that run their businesses on IBM i.
One of them was responsible for bringing the group together to discuss mobile strategies, mobile device management, mobile application development, security, and the assorted and sundry challenges that can cause
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CIOs Move From The Back Office To The Front Lines
March 17, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreAs if CIOs, IT directors, and IT professionals of whatever title weren’t already under the gun for grinding out cost reductions throughout their businesses, welcome to the strategic enabler responsibilities. That’s good news if you have the financial and human resources to get the job accomplished, but bad news if you don’t. IBM i shops have a reputation for running with less total cost of ownership than AIX and Unix. There’s satisfaction in that, but what about that strategic enabler thing?
If you haven’t heard about IBM’s Institute for Business Value, that won’t be true for long. The IBV
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Saxena Leaves IBM, Watson Not Talking
March 17, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreI wonder if Watson saw this coming?
We all know Watson, the cognitive computing in a can with a resume that includes TV star and all-time Jeopardy! king of the hill; medical advisor at the Cleveland Clinic, MD, Anderson Cancer Center, WellPoint, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; and high profile shopping assistant with clients such as The North Face, MD Buyline, Welltok, Travelocity, and Kayak.
IBM has placed a $1 billion bet on the hotshot Watson, believing the cognitive capabilities will fit comfortably inside a set of products that within “the next 20 years will change computing as we
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Modernize Your Skills at the Northeast Tech Conference
March 17, 2014 Dan Burger
… Read moreIBM has its ongoing Global Skills Initiative. COMMON has its Annual Meeting and Exposition. You’ll find high-quality educational opportunities at each, but time and your training budget may not be on your side. For less time away from the office and a lower cost of registration, travel, and lodging–at least if you live in one of the New England states–the Northeast User Group Conference (NEUGC) is a training and education gold mine. It’s scheduled for April 7 through 9 in Framingham, Massachusetts.
The IBM i running on Power Systems is a modern marvel compared to its predecessor machines: the IBM