• Thoroughly Modern: Resizing Application Fields Presents Big Challenges

  February 10, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  (Sponsored Content) It sounds so simple. You need to change the size of one or more fields in one or more applications. How hard can that be? Quite time consuming and labor intensive, as it turns out, if you don’t do it right. To get a sense of the issues that companies face as they tweak the fields in their applications, we sat down with Ray Everhart, a product manager at Fresche Solutions, who knows a thing or two about this issue after many decades in the field.

  Timothy Prickett Morgan: Can you tell us a little bit …

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• DevOps Transformation: Engage Your IBM i Teams

  January 27, 2020 ARCAD Software

  (Sponsored Content) Most enterprises accept the imperative to transition away from legacy waterfall-based development models towards DevOps in order to maintain their competitive advantage. However an ever increasing performance gap can be created between those organizations and teams who are stuck in the earlier stages of DevOps maturity and those who have been able to achieve scale.

  On our beloved IBM i, DevOps is absolutely “no less of a priority.” The IBM i has evolved into a truly modern platform, and generally the IBM i community has embraced the move to DevOps. There can however be certain challenges …

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• IBM Lab Services: Your IBM i All-Star Team

  September 16, 2019 Alex Woodie

  It can be difficult to deploy brand new, cutting-edge technology on an IBM i server for the very first time. Take Db2 Mirror, for example. IBM just released it two months ago, and nobody has much experience deploying it in a production setting as yet. This is exactly the sort of project that spurred IBM to create Lab Services.

  Lab Services is an All-Star team of IBM consultants who are called upon to deploy the newest or most complex technologies. In addition to high availability, Lab Services consultants are engaged in projects around cloud and hybrid cloud, database modernization, and …

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• Yes, IBM i Shops Have AI Options, Too

  April 8, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Companies of all shapes and sizes are encouraged to adopt artificial intelligence these days. Most of today’s AI tech, however, was developed to run in open systems and X86 environments. But there are a growing number of AI options from IBM and its partners for customers that want to keep their data resident on the Power Systems platform.

  There’s no denying there’s a lot of hype around AI today. One can scarcely turn on the TV or open a magazine or Web page without being inundated with claims of how leading organizations are using AI to gain a competitive edge, …

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• Taking A Fresche Approach To IBM i-Watson Education

  February 4, 2019 Alex Woodie

  There is a big data analytics revolution taking place that threatens to separate the AI haves from the have-nots. Companies that run the IBM i server want to get in on the analytics action just like everybody else, but AI discussions often stray away from IBM i. Now Fresche Solutions is working to close that disconnect with a series of educational courses centered squarely on the intersection of IBM i and Watson.

  Last year, Fresche Solutions worked with IBM last year to put together a series of onsite training seminars aimed at giving IBM i professionals the educational tools they …

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Phoenix Envy

  November 12, 2018 Hesh Wiener

  IBM is understandably concerned that its annual revenue, likely to be about $80 billion this year, is 25 percent less than it was in 2011, when it reached nearly $107 billion. The company’s revenue increased during the first two quarters of 2018 after falling every quarter for five and a half years, but its falling fortunes have discouraged customers, employees, and investors. Apple, the largest technology company in the world, boasts revenue that is three times that of IBM. It nearly failed in 1997, but Microsoft helped it rise from its own ashes like the Phoenix.

  The …

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• Db2 For i Innovation: Expect The Unexpected

  July 23, 2018 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to planning the future of the database at the heart of the IBM i platform, there’s a lot to be said for taking a conservative approach. Why mess with success? But that’s not necessarily the route taken by IBM’s architect for Db2 for i, Scott Forstie, and the IBM i community is the better for it.

  As the business architect in charge of Db2 for i, it is Forstie’s job to ensure the database meets the needs of IBM i shops around the world. IBM has a duty to protect the investment that its clients have made …

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Wounding Watson

  June 18, 2018 Hesh Wiener

  CEO Ginni Rometty is highly regarded inside and outside IBM. For instance, the Forbes ranking of female executives puts Rometty in the top ten. Moreover, gender and other qualifiers aside, Rometty is one of the world’s prominent business leaders. When she does well, the results are widely broadcast; when she slips up, however, so is criticism. In the spring of 2018, media reported big layoffs in the health related activities within IBM’s Watson collection of technologies. The buck stopped with Rometty, who was undoubtedly rattled; she will recover. Watson was wounded; the prognosis is uncertain.

  The Watson problem, an …

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• 30 Years And Just Getting Started: IBM i Celebration Looks Ahead

  April 4, 2018 Dan Burger

  It’s been said many times that you can’t move forward if you keep looking back. What you’ve accomplished is not the end point. It’s the foundation for building toward the future. You can look back to see what you’ve missed, but it takes forward thinking to make up for it.

  This week is the beginning of a lengthy celebration spotlighting “30 years of innovation and we’re just getting started.” The IBM i team launched a website yesterday with a focus on the future, an emphasis on innovation and a reliance on social media (and IT Jungle) to spread the …

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• Proprietary Innovation: An IBM i Ace In The Hole

  March 12, 2018 Dan Burger

  You may know a business executive who has been thrown off balance by the overwhelmingly positive reports of the superior technical advantages of startups compared to legacy businesses that have invested in modernizing or refactoring their existing systems. Well, consider that startup advantage to be a snowball in Phoenix. Organizations with the best opportunities to be powerful within their market segments are the ones that are smart about leveraging their data and increasing the skills of their employees.

  Remember this term: proprietary innovation. Just when you thought proprietary and innovation would never appear in the same sentence, get ready to …

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