System iNetwork

March 2009

March 30, 2009 10:39 AM

Spread a Little TLC--Volunteer at COMMON

If you're attending COMMON's annual conference in Reno next month, you might consider giving a little TLC to the organization.

TLC in this case doesn't stand for Tender Loving Care (as we learned it to mean back in grade school), but rather Tactical Liaisons to Curriculum. COMMON needs a few more people to volunteer for TLC positions at its annual meeting and exposition in Reno April 26-30. TLCs help speakers with sessions by coordinating and monitoring on-site issues. Total time commitment is about 16-18 hours, according to the COMMON website. TLCs must attend an orientation meeting on Sunday afternoon and then be available for half-day shifts Monday through Thursday. The rest of the time volunteers are free to attend educational sessions.

And perhaps the best part? COMMON will reimburse each TLC's conference registration cost at the member/conference hotel rate! No excuses for not going if your training budget has been cut in half!

Get more information about volunteering as a TLC at COMMON's website. The volunteer application also is online.

--Rita-Lyn Sanders, senior industry editor

Posted by rsanders on March 30, 2009 at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)

March 12, 2009 3:37 PM

Got CO2? Let IBM Conduct a Strategic Carbon Management Analysis

With all the hype around going green, sustainable management and social responsibility, IBM has developed a new consulting service to help companies analyze their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and energy usage. But, is this what companies really want and need, especially in this new economy with tighter and tighter practices?

Perhaps tighter practices equate to saving money any way that a company can, including reduced energy costs.

An IBM global corporate social responsibility survey of more than 250 c-suite executives found that 68 percent of them already are focusing on corporate social responsibility activities to create new revenue streams, and 54 percent believe it's giving them a competitive advantage. In addition, 85 percent said they were using corporate social responsibility initiatives to reduce costs, and a third report that their business partners are requiring them to lower their CO2 emissions. Hmmm. Who is requiring you to lower your CO2 emissions? Walmart?

The new service, dubbed Strategic Carbon Management, should help companies develop strategies to better manage and reduce energy use and CO2 emissions while improving efficiency and lowering costs throughout their operations. By implementing the strategic recommendations, IBM expects companies could reduce CO2 emissions by as much as 50 percent--ranging from 15-20 percent for travel and up to 90 percent for datacenters--with corresponding reductions in cost.

"Companies are being driven to reduce their environmental impact and improve their energy efficiency--their customers and partners demand it, their financial performance depends on it, and governments increasingly require it," says Eric Riddleberger, who heads up IBM's corporate social responsibility consulting efforts as the business strategy consulting global leader. "Piecemeal approaches yield piecemeal results, but setting a comprehensive strategy for emissions and energy management can provide real improvements and business value."

IBM can conduct a Strategic Carbon Management analysis on a company's entire operation or any single department--business travel, transportation systems, datacenters and IT systems, manufacturing and distribution centers, office facilities, retail space, research and development sites, etc.--anywhere energy is consumed and CO2 is produced.

The Strategic Carbon Management offering uses a number of IBM consulting processes to help companies perform the analysis, including a carbon management diagnostic, carbon footprinting, green action planning, and business case modeling. It uses measuring and monitoring tools and dashboards to help customers analyze a wide range of issues and opportunities, including carbon trading, regulations, and incentives.

You can check out a demo of the Strategic Carbon Management services online.

If you don’t care to jump onto IBM's social responsibility bandwagon, or it isn't a company-wide choice, you still might be able to do some personal analysis of your servers and impress your boss. IBM Systems Director has a new feature--Active Energy Manager--that apparently measures energy usage among systems.

--Rita-Lyn Sanders, Senior Industry Editor

Posted by rsanders on March 12, 2009 at 3:37 PM | Comments (0)

March 1, 2009 10:50 PM

Worldwide Server Market Contracts Sharply at End of 2008

Surprising no one (except maybe those who've been living under a rug), IDC reported last week that worldwide server market revenue declined 14 percent year-over-year to $13.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008. It's the second consecutive quarter that revenue declined. Server shipments declined 12 percent worldwide in 4Q08 when compared to the year-ago period.

"The server market experienced its sharpest decline since the middle of the dot-com slowdown nearly seven years ago. All server vendors, geographies, and technology segments were impacted significantly as the global recession gained momentum and market conditions weakened as the quarter progressed," says Matthew Eastwood, group vice president of IDC's Enterprise Platforms Group.

The year ended not quite so dismally, with revenue declining 3.3 percent from 2007 to $53.3 billion, while server shipments grew 2 percent to 8.1 million boxes.

All five of the top server vendors saw year-over-year declines in their quarterly server revenue and in their annual server revenue--the first time this has happened since 2002.

IBM maintained its number one spot in the server market with 36.3 percent market share in factory revenue for 4Q08. Still, Big Blue's server revenue was down 20 percent year over year.

Hewlett-Packard took the number two spot with a 29 percent share for the quarter as its revenue declined 10.1 percent compared to 4Q07. Dell maintained third place with a 10.6 percent market share and experienced a 9.9 percent revenue decline compared with 4Q07. Fourth place Sun experienced a year-over-year revenue decline of 14.1 percent in 4Q08 to 9.3 percent market share. Fujitsu/Fujitsu-Siemens experienced a 14.9 percent decline in revenue, holding 4.2 percent revenue share in 4Q08.

Looking at servers by operating system, Unix servers nabbed 36.2 percent of quarterly server spending in 4Q08, while Microsoft Windows servers took 35.3 percent of quarterly revenue and Linux servers represented 13.6 percent of all server revenue.

It appears that the Unix share of server market revenue increased from the year-ago quarter from 33 percent of quarterly revenue, according to IDC. "While actual revenue was lower this time around ($4.9 billion in 4Q08 vs. $5.2 billion in 4Q07), the share of total revenue shows continued investment in Unix servers, where customers have invested so deeply over the years to support mission-critical workloads," says Jean Bozman, research vice president of IDC's Enterprise Platforms Group.

--Rita-Lyn Sanders, industry issues & RPG editor

Posted by rsanders on March 1, 2009 at 10:50 PM | Comments (0)

Consortium Gives RSE Shortcuts Cheat Sheet

System i Developer, which is a consortium of four top educators on IBM i--Susan Gantner, Jon Paris, Paul Tuohy, and Skip Marchesani--have posted a new and expanded version of their popular quick reference guide for users of Remote System Explorer (RSE). The guide, Favorite Keyboard Shortcuts for RSE (WDSC/RDi), consolidates 46 keyboard shortcuts onto a single page and presents them in a format that makes it easy for developers to find the shortcut they need at a glance.

System i Developer says the reverse side features tips on customizing RSE to improve productivity. All of the shortcuts and tips included work with Version 7 of RSE in both WDSC and the newer RDi development environment.

Gantner's Idea

Gantner originally compiled the list of keyboard shortcuts as a teaching aid for students in her RSE courses, and apparently her students appreciated it, leading to the free "cheat-sheet" offering.

With this new release, the guide now offers 10 new keyboard shortcuts, including how to open and close context menus without using a mouse, how to split your screen in the source editor to have two views of the same source member, and how to navigate to specific spots within your code, such as the top or bottom of the source or to/from subroutines and subprocedures.

There's three dozen previous shortcuts, including how to open, close, verify and compile source members more efficiently.

You can also snag additional tips and FAQs for WDSC and RDi users, such as how to create split-screen editing for two different source members and how to use the Outline View, which are also available from the Download section of the System i Developer website.

The consortium's RPG & DB2 Summit is set for April 15-17 in Orlando.

--Chris Maxcer, news editor

Posted by cmaxcer on March 1, 2009 at 4:32 PM | Comments (0)