Four Hundred Monitor, June 5

June 5, 2019 Jenny Thomas

Four Hundred Monitor is intended to be a quick roundup of news and a resource for happenings in and around our IBM i ecosystem and the IT world in general. Our community may be just a small part of the big picture, but we are mighty when we come together. Take the recent POWERUp19 conference that just happened in Anaheim, California. The IT Jungle team was there mingling with exhibitors, presenters, and attendees, and it was a wonderful reminder of the energy surrounding our platform. Keep an eye on IT Jungle in the coming weeks for more news from the show and read on for the weekly roundup.

Top Stories From Outside The Jungle

(IBM) The new IBM i Strategy and Roadmap white paper detailing strategies regarding the IBM i integrated operating environment for Power Systems is now available from IBM. Beginning with a high-level examination of the three focus areas of the strategy, followed by a look at the nature of business in the age of ongoing digital transformation, the rest of the paper focuses in specifically on IBM i. Areas covered in depth include the standing of IBM i in the marketplace, the key pillars of the IBM i architecture, the roadmaps to the future of IBM i and the diverse portfolio of IBM i products. The paper concludes with a list of resources useful to the IBM i community and links to explore for further information.

(Bloomberg Law) Employees of IBM continue their dispute with the tech giant over the way the company was investing monies for the 401(K) retirement plan. The next stop for this battle is the U.S. Supreme Court.

(CNBC) IBM Chairman and CEO Ginni Rometty continues her media tour, this time chatting about the “Tech for Good” initiative.

(ZDNet) Are you in the market for a free drone? IBM is giving away 1,500 drones to coders with good ideas on how to combine drone technology with IBM Watson visual recognition.

Redbooks, White Papers, Blogs, and Other Resources

(The Startup) This author details his journey from a proprietary advocate to an open source idealist.

(Profound Logic) If you frequent YouTube, Profound Logic has a channel for you featuring videos for tips and tricks, best practices, and webinars to help you get the most from your investment in Profound Logic solutions and your IBM i systems.

(IBM Bi-Weekly) Tim Rowe, IBM business architect of Application Development & Systems Management for IBM i, joins host Josh Hall to discuss application development for IBM i in episode 7.

(Fresche Solutions) This Fresche Thinking blog simply outlines the IBM i in nine slides. Available for download.

(OpenLegacy) Don’t forget about security when planning your organization’s digital transformation. This article looks at how to keep your IBM i safe.

Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings

June 5 – Webinar – Get the tools you need to be prepared for IBM i 7.4 in this free webinar: What You Need to Know to Successfully Upgrade to IBM i 7.4. Last year, iTech Solutions performed over 400 OS upgrades. When thinking about IBM i 7.4 for the future, it’s important to trust the experts. In this webinar, Pete Massiello will cover planning tips, pre-requisites, the upgrade, and then post-installation requirements. Your upgrade isn’t complete until this last step is done.

June 12-19 – Berlin, Germany – The Common Europe Congress brings together Power System experts, users, vendors and like-minded professionals to network, learn, and share best practices. Education is delivered by industry experts, IBM developers, and like-minded peers. The Congress is designed to welcome networking and conversations to seeking solutions to your IT issues by conversing one-on-one with vendors in the exhibit hall or learning new ideas from casual conversation with your peers.

June 20 – Webinar – Watch Simon Hutchinson of rpgpgm.com explain how SQL views can make it easy for your business users to understand and work with your DB2 on i data. There will also be a demonstration of NGS-IQ query, reporting, and analytics can take advantage of SQL views to produce Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, web reports, and multi-dimensional models.

June 24-25 – Livonia, Michigan – MiTEC 2019, the Michigan IBM Power Systems Technical Education Conference, will power you into the future. June 24 features four workshops: RDI/RPG Bootcamp. Systems Management, Python, PHP. June 25 offers over 45 sessions covering topics including system architecture, application development, mobile applications, RPG, Python, business intelligence, disaster recovery, and performance monitoring. Lots of opportunities to learn and share with peers, renowned speakers, IBM developers, executives, and fellow members. Plus a Vendor Expo!

June 26 – Webinar – iTech Solutions is offering a IBM i Virtual Day of Education featuring sessions and live Q&A from IBM Champions Pete Massiello, Richie Palma, and Steve Pitcher. If you missed conferences like IBM Tech U, NEUGC, or POWERUp 2019, this is a great chance to attend helpful sessions and ask questions right from your own desk or gain access to the recordings. Learn tips, tricks, and information you need to know to successfully run your IBM i shop. Attend sessions of your choice with just one registration.

June 25-26 – Ehningen, Germany – The SAP on IBM i Summit 2019 is for IBM i customers running SAP workloads on IBM i or considering running SAP workloads on IBM i. Learn about the new release IBM i 7.4 as well as the latest trends and developments for SAP on IBM i. Attending the SAP on IBM i Summit 2019 will help you optimizing your existing SAP system landscape and getting ready for the digital transformation. Presenters include experts from both IBM and SAP with many years of experience with SAP and IBM i technologies and solutions.

July 25-27 – Costa Mesa, California – Build on your IBM i talent at the OCEAN TechCon 2019. Expert topic speakers will include: Patrick Behr, Charles Guarino, Birgitta Hauser, Simon Hutchinson, Pete Massiello, Linda O’Neil, Richie Palma, Mike Pavlak, and Robin Tatam. Three Days of Inspiration will include: Day 1 – Professional Development and Modernization; Day 2 – 5 Tracks of Technical How-To’s from Advanced RPG, Open Tools, Systems Management, Virtualization, IOT, plus a free Vendor Expo; Day 3 – Optional Jump-Start Labs. Registration opens May 1. Early Registration is $175. Questions? Contact Bob Langieri – bob@excelsearch.com Subject: TechCon 2019

October 3 – South Burlington, Vermont – Save this date for the 2019 VTMUG Technical Conference & Expo. Already scheduled speakers include Charlie Guarino, Ted Holt, and Scott Forstie. More details to come!