• Four Hundred Monitor, June 21

  June 21, 2017 Dan Burger

  If you’re on top of your game, you see this coming. But even the best prepared are sometimes surprised. When the time comes for a platform evaluation at your organization, can you defend what you do and why you are doing it? Before you get caught with your pants down, read this advice from someone who knows how to cover his technology assets.

  This week’s Monitor also includes articles on accurately accessing emerging technology while facing a hurricane of hyperbole, measuring your Digital IQ (the results won’t be made public), and what’s behind the Oracle to DB2 database migrations. We …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, June 14

  June 14, 2017 Dan Burger

  An IT strategy is often a major resource strategy. Where to allocate resources and how much to allocate is a big part of it. When you are the chief architect for IBM i, you set your priorities beginning with the DB2 for i database and work from there. There are competitive strategies to take into account and collaborative strategies as well. In this article, Steve Will talks mostly about the need for collaborative strategies.

  You could say open source is an important collaborative strategy for IBM i. There’s a legitimate emphasis in that direction. Building skills and increasing the IBM …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, June 7

  June 7, 2017 Dan Burger

  An IT strategy is often a major resource strategy. Where to allocate resources and how much to allocate is a big part of it. When you are the chief architect for IBM i, you set your priorities beginning with the DB2 for i database and work from there. There are competitive strategies to take into account and collaborative strategies as well. In this article, Steve Will talks mostly about the need for collaborative strategies.

  You could say open source is an important collaborative strategy for IBM i. There’s a legitimate emphasis in that direction. Building skills and increasing the IBM …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, May 17

  May 17, 2017 Dan Burger

  For many IBM i local user groups, existence is hanging on by its fingertips. There are exceptions though and this week Monitor points you to an article highlighting a local user group success story. You’ve probably read the IT Jungle stories that have chronicled events surrounding the COMMON Annual Meeting and Exposition in Orlando, Florida, last week.

  And for those of you without a care in the world (We can pretend, can’t we?), we’ve included scary articles about bring your own device warnings and the loss of IT control nightmares.

  Top Stories From Outside The Jungle

  (IBM Systems Magazine) Most …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, May 3

  May 3, 2017 Dan Burger

  Watson is a hive of activity with a swarm of across-the-board capabilities released rapid fire. One of the latest examples, Cognitive Visual Inspection, is designed to help manufacturers streamline their assembly line inspection process by finding and classifying faults in the manufacturing process. We have that story inside this week’s Monitor along with a few others that should be on your radar.

  Did you know it’s been five years since IBM last recorded an increase in revenue on its quarterly financial reports? That’s one heck of a losing streak. How long can that continue? Plus stories on old programs, old …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, April 26

  April 26, 2017 Dan Burger

  All programming languages gain value from programmers exchanging information the tips and techniques and code samples that get passed around. Open source magnifies this information exchange. Contributing code to make sure that all IBM i languages can benefit is a worthy endeavor, says the business architect of IBM i open source Jesse Gorzinski.

  “RPG First” would make a good slogan for lapel pins and bumper stickers. Brian May, a solutions architect at Profound Logic Software, says it’s also good advice to update RPG skills and become a better programmer before taking on another programming language. Learning new languages will be …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, April 19

  April 19, 2017 Dan Burger

  As an IBM i programmer or manager of programmers, how do you instill the mindset of be better today than you were yesterday and be better tomorrow than you are today? It’s not rocket science or brainwashing. See today’s Monitor for how it’s done.

  Last week, IT Jungle published a story titled Blockchain: A Link in Your Long Term IBM i Plan. This week, it’s Technology Review writing about blockchain and a conference called the Business of Blockchain. Setting aside the over-inflated expectations and the white hot hype that we’ve come to expect with the next big thing, blockchain …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, April 5

  April 5, 2017 Dan Burger

  Technically, you don’t need SQL to survive. However, if you’re not using it, you should know what you are missing. Here’s a conversational introduction to SQL that can open the door to modern programming techniques that can modernize applications and databases by reducing the amount of coding and moving business logic to the database.

  This week’s Monitor also has articles about tech start-ups in unlikely places in the United States heartland, a new IBM Cloud and Red Hat Linux partnership built on OpenStack, IBM’s change of heart regarding work-at-home programs, and a piece on why people should and should not …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, March 29

  March 29, 2017 Dan Burger

  Technically, you don’t need SQL to survive. However, if you’re not using it, you should know what you are missing. Here’s a conversational introduction to SQL that can open the door to modern programming techniques that can modernize applications and databases by reducing the amount of coding and moving business logic to the database.

  This week’s Monitor also has articles about tech start-ups in unlikely places in the United States heartland, a new IBM Cloud and Red Hat Linux partnership built on OpenStack, IBM’s change of heart regarding work-at-home programs, and a piece on why people should and should not …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, March 15

  March 15, 2017 Dan Burger

  What do you need from IBM i that you are not getting? If you have a thing or two in mind, IBM i Chief Architect Steve Will wants to hear from you. Here’s his phone number . . . Just kidding. The proper procedure is to use a request for enhancement. Learn more about that in today’s Monitor.

  Along with an article about making change happen are a couple of articles on dealing with changes as disruptive technology and managed services reshape organizations and workforces. And speaking of change, did you see IBM’s surprising makeover at SXSW a few …

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