Dan Burger
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IBM Cuts 600 Workers; Corporate Citizenship Questioned
March 7, 2011 Dan Burger
… Read moreThe relationship between IBM and its employees returned to below freezing temperatures last week as Big Blue handed out pink slips to more than 600 workers, according to the Alliance@IBM, a union group that represents many IBM employees but is not recognized by IBM when it comes to negotiations.
This latest round of terminations are spread among IBM facilities in Rochester, Minnesota; Research Triangle Park and Raleigh, North Carolina; Poughkeepsie and East Fishkill, New York; Lexington, Kentucky; and San Ramon, California. IBM does not provide information that ties the number of employees terminated with specific locations.
Company policy at
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IBM i Vendors: It’s Time to Rally
March 1, 2011 Dan Burger
… Read moreA second webcast is being planned by the IBM i Manifest Americas group. This one is specifically for independent software vendors (ISVs) and product developers a critical contingent for the success of iManifest. The vendor community has been one of the traditional strengths of the IBM i ecosystem dating back to the debut of the AS/400. It’s fair to say the IBM i ISVs know the midmarket better than IBM does.
I don’t know the exact number of IBM i ISVs in the Americas, but it’s many hundreds and there are thousands of applications that run natively on the IBM
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Sirius Claims Third Consecutive Beacon Award, Notes IBM i Trends
March 1, 2011 Dan Burger
… Read moreEach year IBM presents the Beacon Awards. It’s like the Academy Awards, but without the faces you see on the magazines at the grocery store checkout counter. That is to say it is a big deal and a prestigious honor for IBM business partners that nab this piece of hardware. Sirius Computer Solutions has taken some of the drama out of this presentation after grabbing the Overall Technical Vitality award for the third year in a row. The award signifies achievement in technical excellence and innovative solutions based on IBM products and services.
“The IBM Beacon Awards recognize Business Partners
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Social Business Ushering Changes in Content Management
February 28, 2011 Dan Burger
… Read moreAs all the latest, greatest collaboration tools–or if you prefer the term social business tools–make their way into companies, another river of data is in need of organization. Some businesses have yet to skillfully manage their transactional data and business processes, while others have those handles in place and are on an organizational mission to do the same for what is commonly called unstructured data–the emails, the instant messages, the blogs, the modern communications that are increasingly permeating business.
It’s not a safe bet that information technology can save us from what it creates, but its record is really pretty
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Lotus on IBM i: A Chat with Some Users
February 21, 2011 Dan Burger
… Read moreIn the highly amplified world of information technology, the chatter about what’s next almost always drowns out the talk about what the majority of companies are capable of doing to help their businesses today. Innovation makes the news, but in the real world innovation isn’t the extreme sport that it’s often portrayed. Real innovation is results oriented. If you want to know the reality of IT departments running Lotus software on the IBM i platform, talk with some average companies.
There’s a great deal of innovation going on if you are willing to put innovation in perspective with where a
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Soltis to Explain the Future of IBM i in Summit Keynote
February 21, 2011 Dan Burger
… Read moreFrank Soltis, retired chief scientist of the IBM i and currently an activist for IBM i Manifest Americas, is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the RPG & DB2 Summit next month in Orlando, Florida. It’s expected he will announce a new IBM i Manifest Americas initiative specifically geared toward IBM i developers and IT management during his discussion of the current dynamics within IBM i shops.
“Few people have any idea just how big the i is to IBM,” Soltis said in a statement released to the press. “I hope to shed some light on why the
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iSam Blue Predicts Falling HA Costs
February 14, 2011 Dan Burger
… Read moreRobert Seal is convinced the cost of high availability can be reduced. And he thinks that cloud computing is just the thing that will make that happen. The costs of HA–both software and hardware related–have already been squeezed in the past several years, but even the most optimistic estimates have fewer than 10 percent of IBM i, System i, iSeries, and AS/400 shops implementing this level of business resiliency. Seal says HA is ready for a growth spurt.
Seal is the president and CEO of iSam Blue, the North American distributor for Quick-EDD, high availability software produced by Trader’s
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Toronto Night School Plugged into IBM i LUG
February 14, 2011 Dan Burger
… Read moreAs local user groups (LUGs) in the IBM i community flicker and fade away, it brings increasing attention to the survivors. What are they doing to keep the candle lit? Offering quality education and training has always been important, but maybe never of any greater importance than it is today.
The Toronto User Group (TUG) has found that a close affiliation with a local college has worked out well and the TUG membership is taking advantage of this to a greater degree than anyone might have expected.
TUG Night School classes began in 2010. The success of those courses, judged
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IBM Takes Social Business Message to Partners and Universities
February 7, 2011 Dan Burger
… Read moreIBM is out to prove itself a champion of enterprise social media, also known as social business. In what we used to call the “eat your own dog food” test, IBM is a chow hound. Its internal use of social media is widespread. And its enthusiasm for making its Lotus software division increasingly social has not been half-hearted. Big Blue’s next move is to increase its efforts through initiatives in its PartnerWorld and Academic Initiative programs.
Transforming traditional businesses into social businesses doesn’t come from a CEO having an epiphany while updating his Facebook account. Executives want some demonstrable evidence
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Mobility, the Cloud, and Social Business Top Lotusphere Agenda
February 1, 2011 Dan Burger
… Read moreMixing social networking with business objectives has a great upside, but before get all giddy about this, let’s call it a potential upside. Even though it’s already taken on the more serious, buttoned-down name of social business, it’s not yet the game-changer that’s it’s predicted to be. At IBM’s Lotusphere conference, being held this week in Orlando, social business is the biggest star and Lotus software is your ticket to the moon.
Just yesterday IBM set loose the balloons and confetti on new software and services designed to integrate social media and business processes. The promised benefits can be found