• IBM To Peddle Software And Systems Training Through Partners

  July 15, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue is getting out of selling education and training services to customers for its Software Group and Systems and Technology Group, and shifting to an indirect sales model through a new training channel that it has set up. Steve Mills, who is in charge of the converged Software and Systems Group (which even IBM doesn’t talk about as a single entity for the most part), snuck out a blog post on the new education and training channel program on June 27, but the effort was not formally announced until July 12. “This is an important initiative, one which we

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• The IBM i Community Is Eying the MSP Option

  July 15, 2013 Dan Burger

  The successes of companies that are pioneers in the adoption of managed services–what some call hosting and others call cloud computing–will encourage others to follow. There just haven’t been all that many successes so far. At least not in the IBM midrange community, and especially if you separate the disaster recovery and high availability business from companies who would put their production server in the cloud. I think the successes in the DR and HA environments are terrific, and they do encourage others to follow that lead. But that is still a long way from loading day-to-day, mission critical enterprise

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Drones With Phones

  July 15, 2013 Hesh Wiener

  Cisco TelePresence is a software system that gives functionality and character to a robotic rolling plastic column dubbed Ava 500. Ava, ambulatory hardware from iRobot, is five and a half feet tall. It is packed with media transponders and features a display showing a remote operator’s head. Ava has plenty of company these days. Some roving devices bring doctors to distant patients. And back in computing country, both IBM and EMC are testing machines that patrol data centers. If this catches on, you might get a glass house robot yourself, or be replaced by one. Cisco-iRobot Ava 500:

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• Sirius Scopes The IBM i Power Systems Market

  July 15, 2013 Dan Burger

  Stoked by Power7 and Power7+ server sales and growing interest in PureFlex pre-integrated infrastructure, storage developments, and the emergence of managed systems, Stan Staszak of Sirius Computer Solutions is a happy guy. Staszak, the director of Power Systems solutions at Sirius, describes 2013 at the halfway point as “one of the best years we’ve seen in a while.” He gives partial credit to the rebounding economy, but most of it to the price/performance of the Power7 and Power7+ product lines and an IBM Power Systems lineup on the rise. That’s not surprising for an executive in the IBM sales channel,

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• Infor Customers Are Really Happy With IBM i, Survey Finds

  July 15, 2013 Alex Woodie

  A recent survey performed by Infor‘s EMEA group found a very high degree of satisfaction with the IBM i server platform. The survey, released on the 25th anniversary of the launch of the AS/400, finds a strong belief among users that the system is “future proof.” However, more than half of the users considered a lack of IBM i skills as a looming problem for themselves. Infor’s EMEA System i Survey 2013 puts into numbers the feelings toward the box expressed by more than 100 managers and high-level decision makers at organizations that use the IBM i server to

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• What Is IBM Going To Do With Its Systems Business?

  July 15, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  I don’t pull the intuition card very often, but in this case, I can feel it in my skinny little bones. Something is up at IBM, and I think we can expect to see some big changes in its systems business in the coming months. This is not just a hunch, but the reading of the executive tea leaves combined with a hunch and observations of IBM for over three decades now. You get a feel for when Big Blue is ripe for change if you have been doing this long enough, and we have a new CEO who

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• Admin Alert: Major And Minor IBM i Power System Upgrades

  July 10, 2013 Joe Hertvik

  When upgrading your current IBM i hardware, you may have more choices than you think. With the incredible capacity built into late model System i and Power systems, you may be able to perform a minor upgrade on existing hardware, rather than moving to the latest Power 7+ machines. Here are some tips on how you might be able to stretch your existing hardware rather than buying a new machine. What Can You Do? If you sized your current machine correctly, you may have more than enough excess capacity to stay with the existing hardware for a few more years.

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• First Normal Form On The Fly

  July 10, 2013 Ted Holt

  Converting normalized data into a repeating group is a common requirement, and we have discussed that topic several times in Four Hundred Guru, even in this issue. Sometimes the need arises to convert data in the other direction, i.e., to convert a repeating group to a normalized form. This is a handy technique to know, and it’s easy. Suppose you’ve been given a spreadsheet with 13 columns of data. The first column is an item number. The next 12 columns are replacement costs for each month. You’ve been asked to load the data into a normalized table (physical

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• Presenting Vertical Data Horizontally

  July 10, 2013 Victor Pisman

  Presenting “vertical” data in a “horizontal” format is a challenging task in data management. Here is one method you can use to make SQL carry out this type of transformation. Consider table CUSTGRP, which has two fields: a customer ID and a group code. Notice that one customer can have multiple group codes. ID GROUP 100 C 100 F 100 D 200 A 200 E 200 D 500 G 700 B 700 D Here’s one way to

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• Enterprise App Store Approach to Spread for Mobile Apps, Study Says

  July 9, 2013 Alex Woodie

  The adoption rate of enterprise app stores by large organizations will grow at more than a 30 percent annual rate, according to a recent study by ABI Research. The growth is being driven by the bring your own device (BYOD) phenomenon, the firm says. The app store concept was popularized by Apple several years ago as an easier way to browse, download, and install applications on mobile devices, such as its iPhone and iPad. Google followed with Google Play for its Android platform. Even Microsoft has its own store, for Windows 8. But it’s not just consumer games

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