Dan Burger
-
Forced Windows Migration Failures
November 28, 2016 Dan Burger
… Read moreHere’s what 90 percent of the companies don’t do before, during, and after making the decision to migrate from IBM i to Windows. They don’t plan the way they would for any other major business event. Quite possibly that’s because management doesn’t understand the system they currently have and how it works, nor do they understand what the new system entails. Hasty decisions can be costly decisions. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are wasted.
A recent blog post by Bob Losey on LinkedIn casts a critical look at these migrations and why so many of them are failures.
Bob Losey
-
IBM i Shops Do Less To Get More Done
November 14, 2016 Dan Burger
… Read moreOffloading workloads seems to be a popular pastime for more and more IBM i shops. Some of that work goes to other platforms, but we also see the managed service providers (MSPs) with IBM i capabilities picking up jobs. Traditionally this has been disaster recovery service, but production environments are headed that way as well as shops take a closer look at internal IT staff capabilities and set business priorities. Workload distribution has become a strategic necessity.
The trend of moving production IT environments to managed service providers continues to be steady among midsize companies with IT staff tied up
-
You’re Hired! Finding Your Next IBM i Pro
November 14, 2016 Dan Burger
… Read moreThe skills shortage dilemma for IBM i shops is a reality. It’s also an excuse. New technologies are being introduced rapid fire in IT and each has a learning curve that is being handled by people who choose to do so. It takes time and effort. This is enterprise computing. It’s slightly more difficult than learning to play the kazoo. But nearly every IBM midrange system admin or RPG programmer started out being thrown into the deep end of the pool.
You don’t find new employees with the enterprise skill sets of someone with 10, 20, or 30 years of
-
DSI Tries Virtualized Backup and Recovery for Power Systems
November 9, 2016 Dan Burger
… Read moreDynamic Solutions International, a company known for its line of virtual tape library (VTL) systems designed specifically for IBM i shops, just released virtualized backup and recovery software pre-built to handle deduplication, replication and encryption. It’s called DSI Restore and it’s implemented onto a VMware environment. DSI says it new backup and recovery virtual appliance is aimed at companies that find traditional cloud-based solutions cost prohibitive.
DSI considers the backup and recovery appliance on VMware as an opportunity for IBM i shops to save money compared to the cost of adding Linux/VIOS partitions to a separate Power Systems backup
-
RPG Open Source Horse Pulls IBM i Community Plow
November 7, 2016 Dan Burger
… Read moreThe RPG development community is shrinking. I don’t mean because old programmers are riding into the sunset. I’m talking about collaboration and its ability to guide development that benefits the community by addressing the chAllanges of next generation applications for IBM midrange shops. Not that a collaborative open source culture is thriving here. But it could and it should. There are efforts to get this under way. And that will figuratively shrink the community.
Tim Rowe, IBM i business architect for application development and systems management, supports the idea.
“Why not have an RPG open source community? We have a
-
The New Tech Canoe: Paddle Less, Go Farther
November 7, 2016 Dan Burger
… Read moreThe unevenness of enterprise IT due to rapidly changing technology invariably puts pressure on companies unwilling or unable to invest in transforming their established core IT infrastructure consisting of primarily systems of record to a higher octane blend with greater emphasis on systems of engagement. Strategic reactions to this shift are happening throughout the IBM midrange, where the IBM i community–end users and software vendors–has a major presence and a conservative perspective.
At the recent VAI Conference 2016, navigating transformation was the key ingredient in discussions around building efficiencies, reducing costs, increasing market share and resulting in profitability gains.
-
VAI Pours Business Intelligence Into Midmarket ERP
October 31, 2016 Dan Burger
… Read moreDuring the past several years, VAI has rerouted its ERP software roadmap with a modernization plan that included Web and mobile development, cloud-based managed services, and now business intelligence analytics. At the company’s user conference last week in New Orleans, it provided a peek at the BI component in S2K Version 6, which is in the hands of a few customers now and is expected to be generally available in Q1 2017.
VAI’s S2K software is running core business applications in approximately 1,500 IBM midrange shops, primarily in the distribution, manufacturing, and retail industries. The privately owned and family operated
-
The Time And Tech Are Right For Online Backups
October 31, 2016 Dan Burger
… Read moreLogically, tape backups shouldn’t be as popular as they are. The process is cumbersome and hardly aligned with the accelerating pace of IT capabilities and business decision making. When you factor in the recovery time for most companies that rely on tape, the logic becomes twisted. Even with automation, shorter backup windows, multi-platform complexity, and regulatory compliance combine to push the question of whether tape is reasonable, in spite of its widespread popularity.
The online, service-based, backup alternative has been in place for almost 30 years with many improvements during that time. Internet connectivity, CPU capacity, data compression, encryption, and
-
Cross-Platform Development Targets Code Management
October 24, 2016 Dan Burger
… Read moreThe IBM i platform has a reputation that is both good and bad. It is powerful, dependable, securable, manageable, but highly proprietary. Being proprietary means the system and the people who support it on often on their own island. That wasn’t a problem for many years and some shops can still live with that. For others, the “doesn’t play well with others” description doesn’t cut it any more. So IBM is working to change that.
You probably noticed. Going from proprietary to open is not a quick fix. But compared to the days when almost everything in enterprise computing was
-
Knowing Node
October 24, 2016 Dan Burger
… Read moreNode.js is not just one of many open source components that are riding in the IBM i bus these days. It is the one that is most talked about these days. There are many notable IBM i open source passengers on the bus including, the Apache web server, Java, PHP, MySQL, Ruby, Python, and Perl. IBM has done a good job making the platform less proprietary. But Node.js is the one to watch.
If you haven’t been introduced to Node.js, the first thing to know is that it is mostly referred to as Node. The .js, which is a reminder