Four Hundred Monitor, November 8
November 8, 2017 Dan Burger
All things must pass. The pending sale of the IBM Rochester campus plays a sour note in the Minnesota town where it was once a landmark facility of civic pride. IBM has kept a small piece of what once was, but it’s a shadow of its former self.
Monitor points to a couple of security-related feature articles this week. Controlling data in the cloud and measuring risk rather than vulnerabilities are two subjects worth closer examination. And under the heading of “Everyone has to Start Somewhere,” there’s the story of where it all began for Susan Gantner, one of the top RPG programmers and educators on the planet.
Top Stories From Outside The Jungle
(Minneapolis Post Bulletin) IBM plans to split its 500-acre campus in Rochester, Minnesota, and sell the properties to two separate buyers. The sale, described as being imminent for several months, is dependent on the city approving a final plat permit. Big Blue moved into the first of the buildings on that site in 1958. It eventually grew to be the largest IBM facility in the world under one contiguous roof.
(CBR) Faced with the combination of a rapidly evolving threat landscape and increasingly onerous regulatory overheads, businesses should look to employ the most secure and efficient method of controlling their data, without limiting their productivity. Security that travels with documents regardless of location, while under the control of the business that owns it, is impacting data held off premise in the cloud.
(iDevelop) Susan Gantner’s first job in IT was a data entry operator. That didn’t last too long. Her programming skills soon rose to the surface leading her to bigger and better things — like COBOL and JCL on a Univac mainframe. And that didn’t last too long either, which was fortunate for the RPG programming community.
(Dark Reading) Too many security teams are counting vulnerabilities and not measuring risk. It’s essential for security teams to understand the spectrum of risk, based both on the likelihood of an incident and the potential damage that may result.
Redbooks, White Papers, and Other Resources
(COMMON) The schedule for upcoming online educational events includes Sencha open source development, IBM i Access Client Solutions, and training the next generation of IBM i professionals. COMMON members receive free or discounted registration. There are fees for non-members.
(HelpSystems) This free security scan provides a snapshot of your current system security in 10 minutes. It runs directly from a network-attached PC, without modifying any system settings. It audits common security metrics and displays the results in a browser-based application.
(IBM) Navigator for i provides a range of system management and performance analysis features for IBM i. Compare it to the old System i Navigator and see what there is to gain.
(IBM) An overview of IBM i 7.3 TR3 includes enhanced analytics, new security capabilities, and other new functions in IBM i and associated licensed programs.
(IBM) An overview of IBM i 7.2 TR7 includes enhanced analytics, new security capabilities, and other new functions in IBM i and associated licensed programs.
(IBM) This document provides a basic understanding of IBM i on Power Systems performance concepts, workloads and benchmarks. It includes system sizing and capacity planning, performance tools, and Power8 and virtualization performance.
Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings
November 8 – Webinar – This session is focused on producing meaningful reports from your production database. Many business analysts are challenged by reformatting dates, calculating costs, applying unique business rules, if-then statements, a variety of table joins, challenging aggregation requests and multiple output formats. Simplifying the process is the main topic of discussion. This presentation begins at 2 p.m. Eastern Time.
November 9 – Webinar – The Mid-Atlantic Group of IBM i Collaborators user group will host two educational sessions. The first dives into the technology that connects IBM i data to Watson and is presented by IBM i Business Architect of Open Source Technologies Jesse Gronzinski. The second session explains several practical applications involving Watson and IBM i. Clark Everetts, a professional services consultant at Rogue Wave Software, will make that presentation. Both sessions will be conducted remotely via GoToMeeting. RSVP to attend.
November 9 — Nashville, Tennessee – This meeting of the Tennessee IBM Mid-Range User Group will feature a presentation by Richard Marko on the topic of architecting security and compliance solutions. Marko is director of technical services, security products for Vision Solutions. The meeting, which begins at 5:30 p.m., will be held at the Shoney’s restaurant located at 2645 McGavock Pike.
November 9 — St. Louis, Missouri – The Gateway/400 Group, an IBM i user group serving the greater St. Louis area, will get together for lunch and a remote presentation on open source technology with a focus on Option 7 Example Tools Library. Jesse Gorzinski, business architect for open source on IBM i, will be the speaker. Eric Simpson, an RDi developer in the IBM Toronto Laboratory, will be the guest speaker. The meeting begins with lunch at noon and the presentation following lunch. The meeting location is Spazio’s restaurant at 12031 Lackland Road. The presentation is available via a remote hookup for those who cannot attend.
November 14 — Webinar – File transfers can be time consuming to write and maintain. This presentation will help solve connection issues with trading partners and ensure data is protected every step of the way. It also emphasizes the importance of keeping detailed logs of file transfer activity to meet today’s strict compliance requirements like PCI DSS and HIPAA. Topics for discussion include secure protocols, encryption, and moving files between IBM i and other servers. The session begins at 10 a.m. Central Time.
November 14 — Norwalk, Connecticut – The Fairfield AS/400 Users Group monthly meeting will feature Alan Seiden, an authority on PHP development with IBM i, discussing access to resources such as RPG and COBOL programs, system commands, data areas, and more, using a new, free, flexible, open source toolkit, supported by Zend. FASUG meetings are held at the Norwalk Inn, 99 East Avenue, and begin at 5:30 p.m.
November 14 — Westmont, Illinois – A session on the latest enhancements that can make recovery time objective and recovery point objective targets more aggressive will be presented by Debbie Saugen at the OMNI User Group meeting. Saugen will share her real-life disaster recovery experiences along with the pros and cons of tape and virtual tape library backups, cloud backups and logical versus physical replication for disaster recovery. The meeting begins at 5 p.m. with registration and networking, followed by dinner at 6, and the presentation at 7. It will take place at Papa Passero’s restaurant located at 6323 South Cass Avenue.
November 14 — Coppell, Texas – Security expert Carol Woodbury will be the guest speaker at the meeting of the Metro Midrange Systems Association, a user group for the Dallas and Fort Worth metro areas. She will discuss auditing, security-relevant commands and the V7R3 feature Authority Collection. The event begins at 5:30 p.m. with dinner at 6 and Woodbury’s presentation afterward. MMSA meetings are held at the IBM Innovation Center located at 1177 South Belt Line Road.
November 15 — North Attleboro, Massachusetts – Among the many modernization technologies available on IBM i, SQL is perhaps the one best known by RPG developers. This session, hosted by the Northeast Midrange User Group, will focus on how to write scripts that combine SQL statements into procedures that encapsulate database access and core business logic. Guest speaker is RPG and Web development expert John Valance. The presentation begins at 6 p.m. with dinner afterward. The meeting will be held at the Red Stone Grill located at 120 Chestnut Street.
November 15 — Westbury, New York – The Long Island Systems Users Group monthly meeting will include two presentations by IBM i PHP expert Alan Seiden. At 5 p.m., Seiden will discuss bringing RPG and COBOL business logic to the Web with the PHP toolkit. At 7 p.m., he will explore the use of Db2 and SQL with open source languages on IBM i. In between the sessions is time for networking, cocktails, and dinner. LISUG meetings are held at the Westbury Manor located at 1100 Jericho Turnpike.
November 16 — Edina, Minnesota – Wayne Bowers, advisory software engineer for IBM i, will present the latest and greatest enhancements to Access Client Solutions and Navigator for IBM i and future plans for ACS at the monthly meeting of QUSER, the local user group for IBM midrange professionals in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The meeting begins at 2 p.m. at the Sirius Computer Systems offices located at 7760 France Avenue South.
November 21 — Costa Mesa, California – The OCEAN User Group meeting features a session on VB.NET and RPG on IBM i presented by Craig Pelkie. Tools, development techniques and database-driven applications will be discussed. Remote access to the webinar is free for OCEAN members and non-members. Dinner and networking begins at 5:30 p.m. with the presentation at 6:30. The meeting location is National University located at 3390 Harbor Boulevard.
November 28 & 29 — Rochester, Minnesota – IBM & COMMON are teaming up for a second conference on IBM i and Watson. The “IBM i Driveway to Watson” sessions highlight the integration of cognitive and cloud platforms to solve real problems and drive business value with applications, infrastructure and services. IBMers Tim Rowe and Jesse Gorzinski will be making presentations and several hands-on labs are on the agenda. The conference takes place at the IBM Executive Briefing Center. The $349/person registration fee includes breakfast and lunch both days.
November 29 — Mississauga, Ontario, Canada – The Toronto User Group meeting will feature educational sessions on security and Rational Developer for IBM i. The 5 p.m. session examines best practices to protect mission-critical information from data loss or a security breach presented by Jim Kandrac, president of UCG Technologies. The 7 p.m. session covers the enhancements in the coming release of RDi, presented by RDi developer Eric Simpson from IBM’s Toronto Labs. In between the two sessions is time for dinner and networking.
November 29 — Southfield, Michigan – The Southeast Michigan IBM i User Group meeting will feature a recorded webinar with IBM i Chief Architect Steve Will followed by an open discussion period with IBM Power Champion Tom Huntington. Steve Will’s webinar includes IBM i development strategies in progress at IBM, Watson integration with IBM i, key takeaways from the AS/400 days and a roadmap of strategic innovation. The meeting location has not been determined yet.
