Dan Burger
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Time Out: Watch These Videos
December 6, 2010 Dan Burger
… Read moreYikes! Our working lives are killing us. I know you’ve probably felt that way for longer than you want to admit–maybe since your first job. But it’s one thing to feel that way without statistics to back it up and another thing to have the statistics to back up your thinking. Did you know that more heart attacks happen on Monday? A coincidence that we go back to work on Mondays? I don’t think so. But going back to work on Monday isn’t really the case for a lot of workers. They’ve been working throughout the weekend anyway.
Last month,
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iManifest U.S. Adds Halverson to Build Membership, Awareness
November 29, 2010 Dan Burger
… Read moreIt’s been more than a year since the IBM i community in the United States took its first steps toward marketing the platform in the wake of Big Blue’s decision to concentrate on non-platform specific marketing. Success has not been meteoric. There was no reason to believe that it would be. However, by anyone’s measurements, iManifest U.S. has been virtually at a standstill. Can anyone power up this organization? Another person is going to try.
A month ago, iManifest chairman pro tem Jeff Olen announced he would be leaving the leadership position at the organization and that a replacement would
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Jack Henry Acquisitions Push Record Q1 Revenue
November 15, 2010 Dan Burger
… Read moreMajor acquisitions during the past year are bringing expected gains to the first quarter fiscal 2001 financial report at Jack Henry and Associates. With integration nearly complete and the three acquired companies–iPay Technologies, Goldleaf Financial Solutions, and Pemco Technologies–reportedly running at or above expected performance, JHA enjoyed record revenue and net income for the quarter.
JHA is a producer of integrated software systems for the banking industry. It also processes ATM and debit card transactions for banks and credit unions. Its customer base includes businesses with core applications running on the IBM i platform as well as others.
In
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Negotiate Wisely: It’s Your Job and Your Salary
November 15, 2010 Dan Burger
… Read moreThe biggest mistake IT professionals can make is to assume they have no bargaining power with their current employers. Fear of having your job outsourced; fear of being downsized to death; fear of sounding too arrogant, too dissatisfied, or too ungrateful keeps you harnessed to the plow while your boss treats you like a rented mule. You may think you have to play the game of more work for less pay, but you may want to think again. Your boss might be more worried about you walking out than you are about him kicking you out the door.
The door
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Get Database Skills for Career ROI
November 8, 2010 Dan Burger
… Read moreThe IBM i job market is meat grinder these days for IT workers. The lucky ones are fighting to hang on to the jobs they have, while the unlucky are struggling to put their IT talents to work again. On either side of that great divide, there are people benefiting from having better tools in their toolboxes than the person next to them. I’m talking about specialized skills and, in particular, I’m talking about database skills where there is short supply and a growing demand.
You may have noticed that dramatic economic retardation causes only a minimal reduction in data.
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Acquisitions Hike Avnet Fiscal Q1 Earnings
November 8, 2010 Dan Burger
… Read moreThe early impacts of recent acquisitions by Avnet have shown up in the latest quarterly financial reports released by the enterprise IT and consumer electronics company that many of you are familiar with because of its role in the IBM Power Systems reseller channel. Although year-over-year sales for the first quarter of fiscal 2011 ended October 2 increased 42 percent to a record $6.18 billion, the Technology Solutions portion of the business does not compare well with the previous quarter.
Roy Vallee, chief executive officer and chairman at Avnet, prefaced the Q1 results by saying the July 2010 acquisitions of
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Young Power Systems Professional Organizations Go Global
November 1, 2010 Dan Burger
… Read moreThe IBM i community needs new blood. We joke about the gray hairs and the no hairs, the beards and the pot bellies. It’s surprising you don’t find Geritol tonic and Revitol wrinkle cream as the official sponsors of the annual COMMON conference. You can almost see the retirement barn from where much of this herd is pastured. But in case you haven’t noticed, there are whippersnappers among us–young professionals with enthusiasm for the platform and a desire to network with others and eager to mix the best of the old and the new.
The YiPs (Young i Professionals) have
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CIO Priorities: Increase Cash Flow, Process Efficiencies, IT Awareness
November 1, 2010 Dan Burger
… Read moreOn the list of CIO duties and responsibilities, mind reader is the one that rarely shows up but is often required. And the brain silo that needs to be tapped into? The CEO’s, of course. Whether the grand poobah of your company is forthcoming about it or not, his reliance on the IT department grows each day, each month, each year. So that you have a better idea what Mr. Big Cheese in the corner office is expecting, the analysts at Gartner brain-scanned a bunch of top execs and this is their diagnosis.
Ranking near the top of the revelations
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Document Capture, GUI Admin Tool Added to S4i Doc Management System
October 19, 2010 Dan Burger
… Read moreOne of the great benefits of an electronic document management system is having a system that captures, indexes, and delivers or archives documents and reports in a single repository allowing greater organizational workflow and retrieval. Much of this work can be automated using standardized forms with numbers or bar codes that assist in indexing and filing. However, there are documents that are non-standard and require individual handling to place them in the correct files. That’s where Desktop Capture, a new product from S4i comes into play.
Let’s take an accounts payable process as an example. The typical documents that relate
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No Shortcuts to Program Conversions, OS Upgrades
October 18, 2010 Dan Burger
… Read moreSomewhere someone is about to take a stab at upgrading an IBM i operating system to version 6.1 or 7.1. The probability of mistakes being made is pretty high. The trouble resulting from those mistakes will range from easily correctable to call in the cavalry. The difference can be nailed down to two factors: poor preparation and too little time allotted for completion. Yes, we’re talking about program conversion, which often has more bark than bite.
When you do more than 75 of these OS upgrades in the past year, and more than 200 total, you see the commonly made