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Thoroughly Modern: Infrastructure Challenges And Easing Into The Cloud
November 8, 2021 Marcel Sarrasin
There is an old saying, purportedly a Chinese curse but never proven to be anything but a saying by English diplomats who interfaced with the Middle Kingdom: “May you live in interesting times.” There is an equally mistaken etymology that the word for “crisis” in Chinese is comprised of two Mandarin words for “danger” and “opportunity.”
Even though people misunderstand the source of these sayings, and the latter one is just simply not true at all, it is still the case that there has never been a more interesting time in the information technology sector in general and …
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Thoroughly Modern: Talking IBM i System Management With Abacus
October 11, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan
If you want the members of your IT department to focus on the core applications that define, run, and improve your business, and they also have to manage your systems, and you have limited budgets to do it all, you have to learn to let go of something. There are only so many hours in a day, only so many days in a year, and only so many people to do the work. Something has to give, and you have to keep what brings the real value.
Having an IBM i platform provides plenty of value to start, as IBM …
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Thoroughly Modern: Making The Case For Code And Database Transformation
September 13, 2021 Robert Arce
The last 18 months, we have seen many companies shift their IT plans and prioritize digital transformation around internal and external access to their systems. Some had started their modernization efforts which made the transition easier while many others who thought they had plenty of time had a rude awakening. So many ways of doing business have changed – and they have changed forever. In the face of such rapid changes, companies have realized that IBM i modernization is inevitable.
Simply put, it is about figuring out:
- How to enhance an application by applying best practices, creating resilient code and
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Thoroughly Modern: Making Quick Wins Part Of Your Modernization Strategy
August 9, 2021 Chris Koppe
IT leaders are being asked to do way more than keep the lights on these days. For many, the recent pandemic has exposed the need for organizations to provide effective digital experiences and enable remote work. At the same time, many industries experienced revenue loss and as a result, have fewer resources.
Understanding where to focus efforts can be key in helping you drive the best value and stay aligned with company goals. Success often lies in striking a delicate balance between addressing modernization needs and working within reduced budgets.
The path to modernizing IBM i applications is paved with …
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Thoroughly Modern: Augmenting Your Programming Today, Solving Staffing Issues Tomorrow
July 12, 2021 Leo Lymberopoulos
Do you have a back-up for when your programmers are on vacation? If not, where would you look to fill the decades of knowledge that is needed to support your RPG or COBOL applications? Who are you going to turn to when your star IBM i programmer – your only programmer – announces plans to retire at the end of this year?
Organizations that run IBM i applications have found themselves in some tricky situations. IBM i is a robust platform and your programmers have spent decades building and maintaining your applications to fit your business. However, as skilled RPG …
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Thoroughly Modern: Clearing Up Some Cloud And IBM i Computing Myths
June 14, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan
We hear a lot of talk about cloud these days, but who is walking the walk? The coronavirus pandemic made a lot of companies take a hard look at how they were doing business, and hardware wasn’t excluded from this conversation. Businesses are now saying, with so many cloud options available, where and how can they start getting their feet wet?
We certainly all know that the IBM i community is dramatically different from most other platforms in the IT space, and has been since Day One. For household names such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, …
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Thoroughly Modern: IBM i Web Development Trends To Watch In the Second Half
May 10, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan
It is hard to believe, but in terms of budgets and thinking, within six weeks we will be entering the second half of 2021, a turning point year if there ever was one, and perhaps an inflection point for 2021 itself and thus for the next decade or so.
The need to modernize is not lost on most IBM i shops, but it seems like there’s a new web technology to learn each week. It’s no surprise that getting started with Web development is a stumbling block in itself. That’s why vendors like Fresche are working to demystify Web development …
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Thoroughly Modern: Innovative And Realistic Approaches To IBM i Modernization
April 12, 2021 Chris Koppe
In your organization, is IT considered a partner in the business or just the service department? Are your IT staff seen as innovators who are connected to your industry and the growth vision of the company? For a lot of clients that I work with on strategy, these are not ways that they would describe their IT departments. But they should be.
At one point, IT was the enabler of innovation, helping drive automation and optimization of business processes. Now, most IT departments are maintaining more than they’re innovating, and there’s an opportunity to change that.
Over the years I’ve …
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Thoroughly Modern: Running CA 2E Applications? It’s Time To Modernize The UI
March 8, 2021 Nick Hampson and Scott Gingerysty
While CA 2E, formerly known as Synon, isn’t discussed as frequently in the IBM i space as RPG or COBOL, customers tell us that it provides tremendous value and competitive differentiation for their organization. In many cases, these applications have been reliably running mission-critical business applications for decades.
However, Synon also comes with risks, such as a shrinking pool of Synon resources. Classically trained Synon programmers are scarce and most programmers who are working with Synon today have picked it up from someone else. Sure, they can build a business application, but when they go outside the basics of the …
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Thoroughly Modern: Understanding Your IBM i Web Application Needs With Application Discovery
February 8, 2021 Scott Gingerysty and Derek Woods
Considering web and mobile development on IBM i? Before you start coding, it’s helpful to assess and validate your vision with a Discovery. Adding this step to your development process increases the likelihood that your project will succeed because it gives stakeholders a clear understanding of what you need, how the application will solve users’ problems and what it will cost.
Fresche’s Web Application Development team is frequently called upon to consider a new business application and estimate how much it will cost to build it. With the amount of detail we typically have at this point (to wit: almost …
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