IBM i (iSeries, AS/400)

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Why IBM Power Systems

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Sunday, June 22, 2014

In the Wheelhouse: Why You Should Invest in In-House IT

Analysis - Commentary

Written by Steve Pitcher

Monday, 16 June 2014

Who knows what's best for your company's technology future? It's the people in the trenches who get their fingers dirty crawling under your desks: your faithful IT department. And they need to be freed from stagnating budgets.

Why is it so hard to fund the mandatory?

A few months ago, I heard from a peer of mine who was tickled pink because she was able to bring on two new full-time IT resources; one is a developer, and the other is a business intelligence reporting guru. Those are two new positions, not replacements. For a small shop like hers, it's an extremely big deal. By small, I mean they have a CIO, four pure tech people, and two peripheral workers that have IT-related duties. That group supports about 600 users. By a big deal, I mean that it took her close to three years to cost-justify the positions and get them approved. Her department simply had too much work to do and couldn't afford not to do it. If you have a cash-flow problem and need your shingles replaced, you'll bring your brother-in-law over for a weekend and give him a case of cold ones. It needs to be done or the house will eventually suffer.

When you bring someone on as a full-time IT worker, the expectations are high. After all, selling the need for hiring someone for a brand-new position is usually a daunting task.

Why is that?

For starters, IT budgets have been stagnating for years. Since the dot-com bust of 2002, IT budgets have either been flat or negative. 2014 was slated to be on the upswing by about three whole points according to some sources.

Think about that.

With the advent of mobile devices, always-on and always-available solutions, the rise of the mobile worker (I always picture users in Braveheart face paint at my office door when I hear that one), bring your own device (BYOD) social computing, big data, analytics, and every other high-level topic, buzzword, and technology euphemism you can fit into a digital paragraph, the budgets that many of you CIOs, IT managers, or IT directors have had to work with have been sitting still or decreasing.

What do we as IT professionals do? We have been asked to do more with less and turn those corporate problem lemons into solutions lemonade. Some IT departments might even turn water into wine on the odd occasion, but if there's any divine intervention to be had, it's usually not in the budget.

The marketing machine selling the idea of moving to the cloud has been on fire for a couple of years now. You see examples of some large companies that have fired most of their IT staff to move to the cloud, turning an expense of human resources into pure tech-service charges. We see successful outsourcing case studies, and we have no doubt about the benefits, but there are still people somewhere, provisioning accounts and creating virtual servers. And no, a monkey can't do it. These are technical people. The resource pool of technical workers hasn't been shrinking, nor has the cost of paying for IT solutions. The workers are shifting more to the cloud, and companies are paying for cloud computing solutions and services there instead of in-house. In other words, it's a cost shift and not usually a cost reduction.

A strong but simple difference between an in-house technical services staff member and an outsourced service is that the employee has a vested interest in the success of the company. I'd bet you my last nickel that the average IT employee cares more about their company's survivability and sustainability than a contractor would. That's with all due respect to contractors, and I've known quite a few who would answer the phone on New Year's Eve and bail me out of a mess. Those guys are paid handsomely for that too. But the IT employee needs the company to expand, to sell more widgets, to cut costs, to be more environmentally friendly. There's a pride of association you get from in-house workers that you don't get from outsourced solutions.

Yes, IT staff needs to be trained. They need laptops. They need smartphones. They need salaries, health and dental benefits, insurance, and all that extra overhead like every other employee.

What they give in return is not the same as the IT employee of yesteryear. No offense to people who cut their teeth thirty-five years ago, but the job description for a modern IT professional has unofficially morphed into an always-available, always-on, mobile, work from the couch, work from the car on the side of the highway, work from the breakfast/lunch/dinner table, work on vacation, call at 3:00 a.m. to unlock an account or manually fix a process gone sour, 24x7x365, sleep-deprived, factory-formulated, high-test geeky workhorse.

And when they're not doing that, they're trying to plan for the future. Not their future, but the company's future. The IT people worth their weight in gold are looking to pay for themselves every year by implementing cost-saving measures or more efficient solutions. Those people scrutinize process and procedure, looking for ways to make things run faster, leaner, and most importantly, more effectively. They do this in order to justify every budget dollar they get.

What value!

But it's no wonder that many IT departments can't get ahead on all the new stuff coming down the pike. Departmental growth has been stunted with stationary or down budgets. Do more with less works in the short term in times of uncertainty. In the long term, it's a recipe for disaster. Imagine if you didn't invest in maintaining and upgrading machinery that builds your widgets. How long would it take for it to break down? You can only hold a factory together with duct tape for so long before it starts to fall apart.

And if IT doesn't keep up with corporate demands because of a lack of resources, then that's when the outsourcing talk starts.

Of course, cloud computing has an initial cost. You have to spend money to save money, right? That's funny. It sounds like something an IT department might say from time to time. But alas, "it's not in the budget."

Do you see the disconnect?

Many in-house IT shops I know spend much time bailing out the boat and not getting enough resources to patch the holes, let alone outfitting it with sonar, radar, and a new efficient propeller. When the water rises high enough inside the boat, the question is raised about buying a different boat—one that doesn't need someone to steer, or bail out, or put gas into the engines.

The extreme cloud marketing hype is hard to resist. You'd better get on board or else you'll get "left behind." How many times have you heard that mantra repeated over and over? It's using shame to market products and services.

Some research firms will tell you that 75% of companies will be "in the cloud" by 2024. What does that mean? That you'll use a private cloud or public cloud or that you'll allow the use of something like Dropbox or Office 365? It's such a questionable statistic that 75% really means nothing. It probably doesn't mean 75% of companies will be outsourcing their IT departments. Even if it did, I'm calling shenanigans based on the ten-year prediction alone. Where's my new flying Delorean and auto-fitting clothes like in Back to the Future II? Science fiction is unrealistic you say? Hardly. Think of the tech we have now that was inspired by Star Trek.

Those influencing the decision to move are usually far removed from technology, looking at cloud replacement strictly as a cost-cutting measure but with the promises of bells and whistles that in-house IT couldn't provide because they were buried under their workloads (i.e., understaffed) or budget-deficient (i.e., underfunded).

We need to be investing in our IT resources constantly. If you want IT to align with the business and really do something, then you need to fund it properly.

When IT gets the resources to do their jobs, then companies will be rewarded with employees who do their jobs better. IT departments can help. We need to unshackle them.

Steve Pitcher
		About the Author:
		Steve Pitcher is the Enterprise Systems Manager for Scotsburn Dairy Group in Nova Scotia, Canada, and is a specialist in IBM i and IBM Lotus Domino solutions since 2001. Visit Steve's Website, follow his Twitter account, or contact him directly at stevepitcher@scotsburn.com.

- See more at: http://www.mcpressonline.com/commentary/in-the-wheelhouse-why-you-should-invest-in-in-house-it.html#sthash.hf1Rhqk9.dpuf

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

IBM Unveils Power 8 For Cloud, Big Data Crunching

Monday, March 3, 2014

Why i for the Casino Industry?

http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh101705-story03.html

by Mary Lou Roberts

If you frequent a casino and play the slots, roll the dice at the craps table, or double-down when the dealer shows a six at the blackjack table, chances are fairly good that somewhere nearby, an iSeries is chugging away. Even before the OS/400 platform had any of its recent names, the gaming industry has been one of the strongholds for the iSeries and its predecessors.

In fact, Tom Reilly, vice president and general manager for Eastern North America for Bally Systems, a solution provider to the gaming industry, boasts that 100 percent of all of the casinos in Atlantic City and more than 70 percent of all of the casinos in the industry use an iSeries for something. "There are a wide variety of proven, industry-specific applications that have been cultivated over the years on the iSeries. It's to the point now where a new casino can pretty much be a turnkey startup," says Reilly.

Reliability and stability are key ingredients in casino management decision making. After all, as much as any other business, casinos are a 24/7 business. If you've ever been lured by the glittering lights of a big casino, beckoning you to come in, sit down, and part with your money, you probably know that, unlike many more traditional businesses, the action is non-stop. Indeed, there's a lot more going on at 2 a.m. than there is at 2 p.m., though who would know? The design of a casino is cleverly planned (no windows, no clocks) to make sure you've lost all track of time as you lose your money.

Reilly stresses the scalability of the iSeries as a major reason for the OS/400 platform's prominence in this industry. "The nature of the casino business involves constant transactions at high volumes. That means you need the high availability that the iSeries can deliver."

"The casino gaming industry required stable, secure, and scaleable solutions and infrastructure to support their mission-critical, 24/7 operations," explains Stewart Applbaum, vice president of sales and marketing for iSeries reseller and application software provider Agilysys. "The iSeries, along with the software solutions available to the gaming industry, have proven to support these needs."

Also pressing on this industry, as it is for many others, is the constant and vigilant attention that must be paid to regulatory compliance. Those auditors from the Nevada, New Jersey, and other state gaming commissions don't mess around, and changes in gaming regulations keep IT staffs on their toes. So, scalability and flexibility are high priorities, too.

All of these attributes are important to Station Casinos, a long-time OS/400 platform user. Marshall Andrews, vice president and CIO for Station Casinos, says the company got its first AS/400 before he was onboard. (He guesses that it might have been around 1993 and the model might have been a D50.) The decision was made, he says, because all of the applications Station Casinos selected--hotel, finance, and purchasing--ran on the AS/400.

Andrews underscores all of the reasons that the iSeries is a great choice for the gaming industry. The things that are most important to him include reliability, scalability, vendor strength, and support. "It performs 24 by 7 by 52, so we can serve our guests in the manner that made us the leader in our market and enables us to keep providing more service so we can continue to outpace our competition."

Today, Station Casinos has three iSeries systems: three iSeries 825s--two high availability (HA) source machines (one with five out of six processors activated and the other with four out of six) and one HA target machine (with three out of six processors activated)-- in addition to one three-way iSeries 830, and two iSeries 720s. All of these machines use the DB2/400 database (obviously), and the systems are split between OS/400 V5R3 and V5R2 with a total of eight logical partitions. They have a consolidation underway to an i5 570 5/8-way box (which will consolidate the two 825s, the 830, and the two 720s onto that machine) with nine logical partitions acting as the HA source machine; the remaining iSeries 825 3/6-way and 4/6-way machines will be used as HA targets.

Applications running on these systems include casino management--the Spin3 Casino Management System, which was "heavily modified and customized by our developers," says Andrews--plus the Lodging Management Systems 1.5 hotel property management from Agilysys, the World suite from Oracle, and additional software modules from the SPSS and Kronos. Other tools and systems software running on the iSeries machines include Vision Solution's Vision Suite 8.1/4.1 for high availability, Aldon's change management software, ACOM's check printing sofyware, Bytware's anti-virus software, ProData Computer Services' DBU database utility, and systems management software from IBM, and Vision Solutions. In addition to the iSeries, Andrews reports that Station Casinos has "numerous Windows servers for file and print services and supporting various gaming applications from Acres Gaming (table-player tracking, race and sports book wagering, kiosks, and so forth) as well as connectivity to applications through Citrix Systems middleware.

Andrews says Station Casinos committed to the iSeries, but would consider other platforms "if IBM doesn't continue to make improvements or provide for research and development to add additional business applications." His wish-list for the future also includes better Web integration with RPG/free.

Another long-time user of the iSeries is one of the largest casino hotel and gaming establishments in the world with multiple properties in multiple states. Their policies prohibit the mention of their name here, but trust me, if you've ever been to Las Vegas, you've heard of them.

The current director of IT has been in the job for three years. He describes the company as "a conglomeration of three companies that each had their respective casino, hotel, and financial systems running on AS/400 and System/38 platforms. These systems date back to the mid-1980s." At that time, "Just about the only game in town was the System/38-based and AS/400-based casino system. Everything else flowed from there."

Today, the organization has six mirrored iSeries systems (a total of 12 boxes), with varying hardware configurations running OS/400 V5R2. The vast majority of the casino, hotel management, and financial systems run on these systems. In addition, the data center has some Microsoft SQL Server databases (with which the iSeries applications communicate) for data warehousing and cross-property loyalty systems, and some Tandem fault-tolerant servers running other casino/hotel systems.

Unfortunately--for the iSeries community, anyway--the iSeries is short-lived in this organization. This casino is currently transitioning away from the iSeries in favor of .NET-centric applications for the casino applications, and a Windows-based package for hotel applications. "The system that originally spurred the commitment to the iSeries has outlived its usefulness. There was a lot of functionality that the vendor could no longer provide." As a result, the decision was made by internal "Microsoft people" to rewrite the entire application in-house.

Given that reliability and stability are perhaps the two most commonly heard attributes that keep casinos on the iSeries platform, is that a concern when moving to Windows? "Very much," this unnamed casino's CIO replies, "but the people who made the decision don't seem concerned. They believe that if there's a problem we can throw hardware at it."

Is there anything IBM could do to keep this casino on the iSeries'? "It's too late," our CIO source says.

So, with one long-time user that is quite committed to the iSeries for the long-haul, and one long-time user that is making tracks to move off the platform, we come to the story of Avi Resort and Casino, a relative newcomer to the iSeries. Avi's first and current machine, an iSeries 820, was just installed about two years ago to run a new property management application, an application that had previously run on a SCO Unix system.

Avi's IT Manager, Stephen Gregg, and his two other IT team members had absolutely no AS/400 or iSeries experience. But in choosing the new property management system, they went through a full selection process that brought them to two finalists: one ran on a Windows platform, and the Agilysys property management solution that runs on the iSeries.

What influenced their decision? Gregg was well aware of the predominance of the iSeries in the casino/gaming industry and had heard for years about the stability of the platform. In fact, Gregg laughingly tells the story of installing some network PCs back in the 1980s (working in another job) for long-time AS/400 advocate, John Keyes, founder of Computer Keyes. Gregg asked Keyes at the time what he was going to do with all those "big IBM boxes" when everything was replaced by Windows and smaller servers, and Keyes just laughed at him. "I was full of myself back then," says Gregg. "Now, I know that John was right. He told me the AS/400 would survive."

Given that no one in Gregg's organization, including himself, had any iSeries expertise, how easy was the transition? Gregg admits that, at the start, he was a little intimidated. "But now it's great. It only took between three and six months until we got to the point where we were fully adept at using the system."

What makes the iSeries a good choice for the casino/gaming industry? Keeping in mind his background as a Windows expert, Gregg's answer is interesting. Of course, he names stability, reliability, and ease of use--the same features touted by just about all iSeries boosters. "The application developers in the iSeries space represent a base of people who recognize and care about the quality of the product," he points out. "Developers in the Windows community are clearly catering to a base that wants to spend less money."

Furthermore, Gregg is delighted with the iSeries support that he receives from his three biggest vendors and suppliers, IBM, Agilysys, and Bally Systems. Now Gregg is looking forward to upgrading to an i5 520, which he anticipates will be installed by December. In addition to property management--the application that triggered the move to the iSeries--Avi has now moved its player-tracking system to the iSeries. The slot accounting system is still running on an RS/6000 Unix box and, for the time being, it's likely to stay there. However, Gregg hopes that, "Ultimately we many have all of our applications running on the same iSeries box in different partitions."

In fact, Gregg has big plans for the iSeries in his shop. Around the first of next year, its materials management system will be moved onto the iSeries. They will still have the back-of-the-house accounting system, the human resources system, and time and attendance on Windows and Novell servers, but Gregg plans eventually to move everything over to the iSeries.

Interestingly enough, although a relative newcomer to the iSeries, Gregg sometimes sounds more like a dyed-in-the-wool, old-time AS/400 advocate. Don't even talk to him about WebFacing! "I can't think of any changes I want made to the iSeries," he says. "But there are some changes taking place that I'm resistant to, and one is WebFacing in front of a green screen. Sure, the GUI interface is nice and warm and fuzzy, but the green screen is more efficient. Give me two experienced check-in clerks--one with the GUI and one with the green screen--and the one with the green screen will check more guests in more quickly. And, I have fewer potential failure points."

Even with some defections from the platform, it's likely that the iSeries will continue to be a mainstay in the gaming industry for the foreseeable future. As Agilysys' Applbaum says, "As the size of these operations continue to grow, the repercussion of solutions going down has great financial impact on businesses. Agilysys customers could realize losses in the millions for even the shortest downtimes. The iSeries provides the most reliable and available server platform for the software solutions that support these businesses."

When I began this story, I did not set out to find three casinos with such different profiles--one long-time user still committed to the platform; one long-time user moving to Windows; and one shop new to the platform with all the enthusiasm and evangelism of the newly converted. It was somewhat a matter of chance that their stories fell this way.

It may be, however, that these three casino industry customers accurately portray a microcosm of the complexity of the iSeries landscape. It's no secret that one reason for the initial success of the platform was the ISV applications base. The tasty meal that brought users to the iSeries table in the first place was not the wonders of OS/400 or even the reliability and stability that they now value so highly; it was the availability of applications and the strength of the ISVs who delivered and supported those applications. Love of the box itself came later.

While IBM is out doing its best to win over new accounts (and clearly making some inroads in that department, with about 3,000 new customers in 2004 and maybe double that in 2005), how many are they losing because, while they were in the barn milking the cash cow for so many years, Microsoft stole the bull? Is it too late to get the message out? Are the programs that shore up those ISVs, enabling them to pump more development dollars into reviving the applications, coming too late? We'll find out.

Mary Lou Roberts, a 35-year veteran of the information systems industry, is a new contributor to IT Jungle. In addition to her work as a reporter in the iSeries space, she has spent her career as a marketing and communications professional working exclusively with information technology publications and companies. She can be reached at WriterNewf@aol.com.

Las Vegas Sands Taps SAS for Predictive Analytics

Corrected: September 6, 2011

by Alex Woodie

Las Vegas Sands, a $6 billion collection of casino resorts around the world, has selected business intelligence (BI) software vendor SAS to help it gain more insight into the behavior and spending patterns of its patrons, and to ultimately boost profits. The company says the new SAS solution easily handles volumes of data that challenged its previous BI tools.

The Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVSC) owns three properties in Las Vegas, including The Venetian, The Palazzo, and the Sands Expo and Convention Center; three in Southeast Asia, including The Sands Macao, The Venetian Macao, and The Marina Bay Sands in Singapore; and the Sands Casino Resort in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. LVSC is a longtime user of the IBM i server, and sources its core property management application from Agilysys.

Like all casinos, LVSC is continually looking for an edge against competitors. Besides making sure that its amenities and its staff meet the expectations of its customers, one of the best ways to gain an edge is to utilize the vast amounts of customer-related data that it collects.

The holy grail in this respect is aligning its marketing and promotional activities with its demand forecast. In the casino business, supply, demand, and pricing often interact in non-linear ways, and this phenomenon has driven a need for sophisticated BI solutions that can generate clear paths of actions for maximizing revenue, profits, or occupancy (perhaps not all at the same time).

LVSC decided to implement a SAS solution called Patron Value Optimization, which uses SAS analytics, as well as a hotel revenue optimization software from SAS subsidiary IDeaS. The combination of predictive analytics, data mining, and graphical campaign management gives LVSC the capability to create the most profitable pricing strategies for each type of customer and season.

While SAS's Java-based software doesn't run on the IBM i server, it utilizes data collected in LVSC's operational systems. Data collected from different parts of operation--including the casino, convention center, hotel, stores, restaurants, nightclubs, and museums--are combined to present a 360-degree view of the customer. By predicting how much a customer is liable to spend on a trip to an LVSC property, it can align its demand-generating activities (advertising and discounts) with the actual prices it charges.

Rom Hendler, LVSC's senior vice president and chief marketing officer, is impressed with the software's capability so far. "SAS enables us to access, aggregate, sort and view any available data point at any time," Hendler says in a press release. "Other analytics software collapsed under this heavy load of campaign management records, but SAS handles it with ease, digging deeply into the data to predict future customer needs so we can tailor offers."

Friday, February 28, 2014

IBM i 7.1 documentation Welcome to the IBM i V7.1 documentation, where you can find technical information about IBM i.

IBM i 7.1 documentation Welcome to the IBM i V7.1 documentation, where you can find technical information about IBM i.

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ssw_ibm_i_71/welcome.html

Top 5 Reasons Profound UI is the Best IBM i Modernization Solution Available

Posted on February 26, 2014 by Jordan Antonoff

During every customer demo, the following question is asked, “How is Profound UI different and why should we go with your solution?” It is one of the most important questions customers ask and it deserves a well thought-out answer. Because, in a world of abundant choices, it is important to understand not only why our IBM i modernization solution is great, but how it differs from available solutions!

So here it is, my well thought-out, thoroughly researched answer to this question – enjoy!

Reason #1: Profound UI eliminates all ties to green screens through a conversion of DDS into HTML5 and integration with RPG Open Access.It’s true: other modernization solutions, even those that use RPG Open Access, still continue to put a screen on top of 5250. Profound Logic does not. This is NOT screen scraping in any way, shape or form! Why is this important? With Profound UI, you can build browser-based applications driven by RPG that can achieve the same UI design and functionality of any other software package or platform available. Here are some of the benefits of eliminating green screens:

Ability to merge multiple screens into one and add multiple subfiles on one screen
Drag and drop capabilities
Subfile column sorting
True scrolling through large subfiles, not just the ability to page up/down

Reason #2: Profound UI is 100% native to IBM i and is 100% browser based.
When you download Profound UI, it runs on your IBM i powered by Apache. Other vendors may require the use of a Microsoft server and/or installation on individual PC’s. This will require you to purchase additional servers and components, which increases your total cost of ownership and creates a new host of security challenges. With Profound UI, there’s no need to download and install updates on individual PC’s, which significantly reduces day-to-day management and opens up System Admin’s, IT Manager’s and IT Director’s precious time.

Reason #3: Profound UI stores screen metadata in traditional DDS members.You should be aware that some of the other modernization solutions available cause you to store metadata in a format that may require you to purchase costly updates for your change management software, or, buy a new change management software package altogether. What makes Profound UI different? Our solutions don’t require additional costs or processes to be put into play, and enable you to keep your exact change management process and software in place. You don’t need to change a thing! You can read more about this in a white paper written by Scott Klement: http://www.profoundlogic.com/newsletter.rpgsp?12/04/2012

Reason #4: One set of tools for converting green screens and new mobile/web application development.Profound UI utilizes the same set of tools for converting existing green screens as it does for new web and mobile application development. By doing so, we have significantly reduced the cost and complexity of modernizing your IBM i. With Profound UI, you only need to learn one new set of skills and it’s one with virtually no learning curve. When working with Profound UI, RPG developers write programs using the same top-down approach they have always used, and any RPG operations that deal with displays are automatically understood by Profound UI and rendered in a capable rich user interface. The interface itself is created using a simple point-and-click, drag-and-drop environment. Why spend time learning two separate sets of tools, when you can learn one, and an easy one to learn on top of that?

Reason #5: Profound UI is built on open and standards-based technologies for modern Web 2.0 application development.In addition to believing in the native power of IBM i and RPG, we feel the same about Web 2.0. Our tools utilize the most modern, standards-based technologies, including JSON, DHTML, HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS. Other vendors utilize less modern and more proprietary technologies. With Profound UI, you can rest assured that you are modernizing with a vendor that will keep its solution up to pace with new Web technology, eliminating the fear of being left behind just a year or two after purchasing new modernization software.

Trust me, there’s more! This blog post could have included 20 bullets, including “Full-featured Trial Download” and “Open UI framework”. But, when trying to decide on what software to purchase, you have to narrow down your buying criteria. We challenge you to try Profound UI for yourself and compare it to the other modernization solutions available and see for yourself! Click here to sign up and try a free 30 day trial:http://www.profoundui.com/puidnld.rpgsp