• Talent Management Programs Depend On Adjustments

  June 9, 2014 Dan Burger

  IT staffing is a serious concern for IBM midrange shops. It is a concern for every company regardless of platform, but the IBM i community is “home” for IT Jungle readers, and the concerns of employees and employers echo across the confederacy. Understaffing and a lack of modern business computing skills are common references. So are cost-cutting measures and workforce rebalancing. Metrics such as servers per server support staff member and IT budget dedicated to application maintenance are highlighted on spreadsheets. Division of labor and the economies of scale factor into this as well. And I almost forgot the aging

  …

  Read more

• Reader Feedback On Power7+ Versus Power8

  June 9, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  I enjoy reading your analysis of the new models (yes, I’m one of those that actually read the data tables). I would suggest that at the entry point (for the i models) $ per CPW doesn’t offer much insight into best bang for buck. At the entry point (I will call that up to 50 or perhaps 75 users with mostly or all 5250 interactive application), there is now a lot more CPW than can be utilized. To me it would seem that a better comparison would be to take a base i system config with moderate to low memory

  …

  Read more

• The Server Racket Concentrates Like Orange Juice In A Can

  June 9, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When I was a kid, and we had orange juice concentrate because it was cheaper and easier to store. I remember popping off the lid to reconstitute the juice and, I won’t lie, scooping out a little bit to eat off a spoon like it was some kind of glorious, natural popsicle. The concentration that is going on in the server market doesn’t taste like that, and for those who make and sell machines, it probably tastes a bit more like bile. I used to joke a few years back that I was really worried that there might only be

  …

  Read more

• Your Priority Is Not My Reality

  June 9, 2014 Dan Burger

  Decision making is greatly influenced by clearly defined purpose and priorities. In certain professions the purpose and priorities may share a common thread. IT is not one of them. The latest survey and report from Gartner proves that point. It found that issues experienced by CIOs are seldom universal and differences exist within narrow geographies defined at regional and country levels. You mean not everyone has cloud at the top of their priority lists? Not hardly. Cloud, according to the Gartner report, is one of the universally agreed upon priorities. “The CIO survey results clearly show that as digital opportunities

  …

  Read more

• PowerWire.eu Rises From The Penton Ashes

  June 9, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  PowerWire.eu, which rose out of the dot-com bust just like IT Jungle did in its third incarnation, was knocked offline for a bit when Penton Media, publisher of Power IT Pro and iProDeveloper were shut down at the end of March. But editor Seamus Quinn has hustled a bit and has gotten PowerWire.eu back online to serve the European Power Systems community. Having lived through this once myself back in the summer of 2001, when money was tight but nothing like it seems to be today, I have nothing but compassion for Quinn and his team at Cue Communications,

  …

  Read more

• Watson Tapped For Mobile Apps

  June 9, 2014 Dan Burger

  IBM has big dreams for Watson, its quiz show champion that’s taken on more serious jobs such as cancer research and financial portfolio management. But on its way to rewriting the book on how to succeed in business, Watson still has some growing up to do. In several real world business engagements, the face of cognitive computing has been labeled a slow learner. No one promised there wouldn’t be setbacks, but when Watson’s boss, CEO Ginni Rometty, puts a $10 billion a year revenue load on your potential, setbacks are not on anyone’s mind. The IBM public relations team is

  …

  Read more

• Calling the Shots with Flash, Disk, and Tape

  June 3, 2014 Dan Burger

  IBM‘s investment in flash storage is an indication Big Blue believes enterprise-level computing is ready for flash. One of its moves is a partnership with Tributary Systems, a company that produces a high performance virtual tape library product called Storage Director. Tributary has just released a virtual backup application called flash tape, which combines Storage Director and IBM FlashSystem storage arrays. IBM FlashSystem emphasizes performance and microsecond response times with reductions in transaction times, batch processing times, and energy consumption efficiencies. Flash tape combines speed and utility–like the creation of a 250 mph Ford Econoline van. Tape has

  …

  Read more

• IBM Helps Users Find i Needles in CMOD Haystack

  June 3, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Metadata and indexes will only get you so far when you’re looking for one particular document among millions. In some scenarios, the capability to match a specific text string against an entire document repository is the only way to find that needle in a haystack. With the latest release of the Content Manager OnDemand (CMOD) for IBM i, IBM has added a powerful full-text search capability that will help users surface that hard-to-find content. Full-text search is an optional feature in CMOD for IBM i version 7.2, which IBM announced April 29 and shipped May 2. The new feature was

  …

  Read more

• Halcyon Fills the ‘Missing Link’ with Interactive Job Log Monitoring

  June 3, 2014 Alex Woodie

  Halcyon Software claims it solved the “missing link” of IBM i message monitoring with a new interactive job log monitoring feature in the latest release of its Systems Operations Suite. The capability to monitor what interactive users do on the system will help administrators close the loop on server monitoring and get a jump on errors that could potentially corrupt data. The new job log monitor in Systems Operations Suite (SOS) allows administrators to view all application, error, and other messages relating to jobs that are currently running. Normally, this information is transient on the system, hidden from view, and

  …

  Read more

• LANSA Teaches BPI Tool New SQL, Web Services Tricks

  June 3, 2014 Alex Woodie

  IBM i is a wonder of automation. Many of the tasks that require manual effort on other systems are handled “autonomously,” to use a word from the last decade. The folks at LANSA have long been advocates for a higher state of automated being on the IBM i platform, and the company takes it to new heights with the latest release of Composer, its business process integration (BPI) tool for IBM i and Windows. LANSA Composer is a chimera that combines a drag-and-drop development interface with a data integration engine to help automate manual processes. Examples of these processes include

  …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles