System iNetwork

April 2009

April 28, 2009 9:24 AM

What a Difference a Millennium Makes

a guest blog post by Chuck Lundgren

Attending the 2009 COMMON in Reno, I was pleasantly surprised at how large the Expo was. The booths were stocked with plenty of vendors and show giveaways. Given the state of the economy, I was half-expecting empty booths, tumbleweeds, and some skeletal remains. Of course this Expo wasn't as large as the Expos in the late 90s or early 00s, but it wasn't bad at all. Vendors seem to be upbeat about the attendance and interest, too.

It's been about eight years since I've attended COMMON. Before then, I attended intermittently for something like 20 years. As I wandered the Expo and walked by the sessions, it struck me how far things have progressed over the past decades with COMMON and IBM.

If you've been around a while (i.e., if you're an old nerdy geezer like me), you know that for years COMMON aggressively prohibited vendor displays and booths. Pity the company that even hosted a vendor suite at the COMMON conference hotel.

In those pre-web days, the only way for midrange vendors to sell their wares was by buying expensive print ads, card decks (remember ResponseDeck?), and with booths at traveling vendor expos. It took way too long for the organization to address the need for a vendor expo. But COMMON did finally relent, which made it possible for vendors to meet and sell to thousands of potential customers face-to-face.

I was also struck by how far IBM has come. In the early 90s, I attended a COMMON BOF session in which a dozen or more developers made the case for IBM to provide APIs for the then very closed AS/400. The reaction from IBMers was hostile and insulting, and I wrote about it in the then-back-page-column Street Talk in System iNEWS. It took a few more years, but IBM saw the wisdom in helping--and not fighting--third-party developers, and they opened up the machine with APIs. It was gratifying to see API sessions at COMMON, a testament to how far IBM has come.

Chuck Lundgren is a System iNEWS senior technical editor.

Posted by lharty on April 28, 2009 at 9:24 AM | Comments (0)

Scott Klement Vlogs from COMMON

I ran into Scott at the System iNetwork booth at COMMON, and he told me, "I was thinking there are probably a lot of people who couldn't come to COMMON this year, because of the economy, so I thought it would be fun to do a little bit of video blogging to share what the conference is like." He set up a channel for his video blog ("vlog") on YouTube, and you can follow along day by day and feel almost like you're here in Reno too. You might even catch a shot of yours truly in Scott's vlog.

... later that same day ...

I have an anecdote to share from Rita Sanders. She and Chris Maxcer were talking to Scott on the expo floor, and Rita says, "At the moment we finished, two guys from Halcyon appeared out of nowhere. One with a British accent says, 'I got woken up by a call at 3 a.m. this morning from my boss, telling me about these 'vlogs' and asking me who is this guy, and why haven't I asked him to video me, yet." Apparently Scott's video blogs have spread like wildfire, even to Britain! So Scott is about to go to their booth when at that moment Jon Paris RUNS up to Scott and exclaims, 'Scott, there's a guy in the next aisle lying on the floor who says he's too exhausted from the show to get up. You've got to come get him on video.'"

So be sure to tune in to Scott's YouTube channel...you never know who you'll see!

--Linda Harty, executive editor & security/availability/networking/connectivity editor

Posted by lharty on April 28, 2009 at 8:46 AM | Comments (2)

April 27, 2009 4:06 PM

COMMON Keynote: Privacy, Surveillance, and the Persistence of Data

Jeff Jonas, a Las Vegas resident, data expert, and popular conference speaker, shared how he uses his insights into data to shine a spotlight on the bad guys—be they casino scammers or international terrorists. In a keynote address at the annual gathering of the COMMON IBM i users group, Jonas explained the tenets of nonobvious relationship awareness (NORA) and how he shows casinos and U.S. government agencies how to piece large amounts of data together like a jigsaw puzzle to pop the miscreants.

Starting with a few simple assertions such as "the data must find the data" and "the relevance must find the user," Jonas, Distinguished Engineer and Chief Scientist, Entity Analytic Solutions at IBM, provided a high-level look at how he interrogates large data sets. Without context, he says, it's impossible to analyze data across the silos in which it finds itself. He calls this state of affairs "enterprise amnesia." How, he asked, do you stitch everything together—the siloed data, the structured data, and the unstructured data? He set the problem this way: "How do you accumulate context?" His answer: The arrival of each piece of data must be treated as a query. You can't know until the data is asked "how does this relate to what I know?" how valuable a piece of information can be.

When data is treated this way, a state Jonas calls "persistent presence," a seemingly innocuous puzzle part, such as an address change or a repeated misspelled name can give rise to an epiphany that connects other puzzle pieces or let the analyst know that previous assumptions have been false.

Of course if all data is marked, this means that not only can the bad guys' activities be traced, so can everyone else's. We're moving toward what Jonas called a "surveillance society." He pointed to the ACLU clock on social surveillance, designed on the model of the Atomic Scientists' Doomsday Clock, which says that we're at six minutes to midnight—the witching hour for total surveillance. (The Atomic Scientists' clock is currently at five minutes to midnight. It would be an interesting exercise to unsilo the data behind these two clocks.)

Jonas anticipates that piles of data will eventually become one collective intelligence stored in the cloud. As for life in 2050, he predicts that this "collective intelligence will evaluate what you need to know and tell you." Privacy protections will be a matter of skillful coding. And of course eternal vigilance.

—Sheila Molnar, Executive Editor, Penton Media Developer Content

Posted by lharty on April 27, 2009 at 4:06 PM | Comments (0)

April 26, 2009 10:46 PM

Award Recipients Honored by COMMON, IBM

COMMON and IBM both handed out awards during the opening session at COMMON Reno 2009. IBM presented its Innovation Awards to companies that have created innovative solutions on the IBM i platform, while COMMON presented its Distinguished Service Award, Impact Award, and the Al Barsa Memorial Scholarship. Recipients of the 2009 COMMON awards are:

• Al Barsa Memorial Scholarship--Paul Rogers
• COMMON Impact Award--Al Barsa, Jr. (awarded posthumously to Sue Barsa)
• Distinguised Service Award--Ron Newman

Recipients of the IBM Power Systems Innovation Awards are:

• Education Excellence--Metropolitan Community College, Omaha, Neb.
• Energy Efficiency (IBM Systems Director Active Energy)--United States Bowling Congress
• Web Solution--Allied Beverage Group, LLC
• Business Solution--Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, Los Angeles, CA
• Virtualization Solution--Perishable Distributors of Iowa

--Rita-Lyn Sanders, Senior Industry Editor

Posted by rsanders on April 26, 2009 at 10:46 PM | Comments (1)

April 23, 2009 12:09 PM

IBM i-Friendly Skills Appear on Hot List

You may be a bit down in the dumps as of late, wondering how your IBM i skills, which you've coveted your entire career until the last few years, are going to translate into future job potential.

But trust me, baby, you've got SKILZ!

Okay, so don't trust me; but according to Foote Partners, which tracks IT salaries and certifications from sunny Florida, virtualization is a hot skill right now.

Third down on Foote Partners' new Hot List of IT skills, in fact, right behind Java (gulp!) and Linux on the non-certified side. Microsoft .NET and NetWeaver round out the top 5 non-certified, hot (ouch!) IT skills.

So, if you're a Crackerjack IBM i systems manager who has become a virtualization maestro, then you've got a hot skill. And if you've happened to play with Linux on an i logical partition, too, then you're double skilled!

And there are plenty of other non-certified skills on the Hot List that apply to IBM i, so if you've been tinkering with the box for more than just business apps, heck, you could be triple, quadruple or even quintuple skilled: unified communications and messaging is no. 7 on the list, while security comes in at no. 8, MySQL is no. 22, and PHP is right behind it at no. 23.

Now, if you're looking for genuine certified skills that could translate from your IBM i career, you have to look a little farther down on the Foote Partners' Hot List of IT certifications. It looks to me like IBM Certified Infrastructure Systems Architect (no. 12) could do it for you, and there are a bunch of Cisco certs listed. Of course, there are a few Microsoft, and something called SNIA (gesundheit!).

And what might this mean, exactly? Well, again according to Foote partners, it's true that many skills and certifications have declined in value because of the economic recession. Pay premiums for IT-certified and non-certified skills fell an average of 0.5 percent in the first quarter of 2009. Still, 46 skills and certifications increased in value.

"This is not at all unexpected, for a few good reasons," insists David Foote, the co-founder, CEO, and chief research officer of Foote Partners. "First, pay for skills is, by its nature and purpose, more dynamic than salaries. Employers use it tactically and strategically to attract and retain talent. And second, the fact is that premium pay for skills is even more important during tough economic times when fear and uncertainty about job security clouds the judgment of IT professionals.

"That's because even the best workers are nervous about whether they will have a job," explains Foote. "They're concerned about stability, and so they look for signs that their employers are recognizing and rewarding them for their skills and contributions. Employers can't afford to appear blasé about their most important IT people. Sending out even a passive message that can be interpreted as 'you're not worth investing in' can result in experienced workers wondering whether they should start considering a change of venue."

So cheer up, and put those skills--both certified and non-certified--to use!

--Rita-Lyn Sanders, Senior Industry Editor

Posted by rsanders on April 23, 2009 at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

IBM i Guru and Athlete Gene Gaunt Runs Boston Marathon

The IBM i industry's very own Gene Gaunt ran the Boston Marathon this week! Gene's most recent article for System iNetwork is "Fanfare for the Common Cryptography."

He ran for Team Fox, the Michael J. Fox charity in support of finding a cure for Parkinson's disease. Thanks to Rory Hewitt, who brought Gene's efforts to our attention in a forum post here on SystemiNetwork.com.

The forum post contains a link to a Boston Globe photo of Gene completing the marathon. As well, if you'd like to donate to the Michael J. Fox charity on behalf of Team Fox, you can find a link to do so in Rory's forum post.

Congratulations, Gene!

--Linda Harty, executive editor & security/availability/networking/connectivity editor

Posted by lharty on April 23, 2009 at 10:14 AM | Comments (0)

April 22, 2009 10:57 AM

Services Highlight IBM's 1Q Financials

IBM announced its 2009 first-quarter financial results this week, noting that net income declined 1 percent while total revenue for the quarter ($21.7 billion) declined 11 percent. IBM cited the obvious difficult economic environment, and pointed out the company's transformation away from a dependence on hardware toward a more economically-resilient services-oriented business is already paying off for the company. IBM managed to eek out diluted earning of $1.70 per share, up 4 percent, no doubt in part due to rigorous operational cost cutting.

Here's some illuminating highlights from the IBM conference call with investors--the block quotes below are all from IBM Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge, who traditionally delivers the complicated results in a relatively easy-to-understand oral form:

We've done a lot of work over the last decade to transform the company, shifting to higher value areas, globalizing our business, and constantly working to improve efficiency. I'll give you a few examples of how the changes we've made have positioned us to deliver this performance in a challenging economic environment.

First, with a focus on higher value offerings and strong services capabilities, we can adapt our offerings to deliver what clients are looking for. Today, clients remained focused on trying to save cost and conserve capital. Our services signings reflect our ability to meet these needs.

Second, the actions we've taken have dramatically shifted the mix of our business--and our profit model has less dependence on hardware, which is more vulnerable to economic conditions. In fact, this quarter effectively all of our pre-tax profit came from software, services and financing. The annuity nature of these businesses provides a solid base of revenue, profit and cash.

Third, we have been investing to capture the opportunity in the growth markets. Our constant currency revenue growth in these markets remained about 8 points higher than in the major markets.

Finally, we've had an ongoing focus on driving productivity in all parts of the business, from sales efficiency to supply chain management to service delivery to global support functions. The result of this work is to reduce our fixed cost base, and therefore improve the operational balance point.

Bottom line, we have built a more resilient business model, and one that generates more profit from each dollar of revenue.

Power Systems and Hardware, etc

Loughridge noted, "Systems and Technology performance reflects the challenges that transaction-based business are facing today. Within the segment, our UNIX servers performed well." He didn't mention IBM i at all, but that's to be expected in how IBM is reporting its Power Systems hardware line.

Systems & Technology revenue of $3.2 billion was down 23 percent year to year, or 18 percent at constant currency. We continued to have strength in the high end of our servers--driven by virtualization, increased efficiency, and good returns on investment. First quarter was the fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit MIPS growth on mainframe servers, and we had double-digit revenue growth in the high-end of POWER servers. . . .

Focusing on the brands, System z revenue declined 19 percent year to year, or 12 percent at constant currency, while MIPS grew 18 percent.

Converged System p was down 2 percent but up 5 percent at constant currency, gaining 4 points of share. Revenue from our high end converged System p continued to be very strong. Revenue was up 35 percent. We had 62 UNIX competitive displacements this quarter, with half of the transactions over $1 million.

System x server revenue declined 27 percent year to year. The demand for x86 solutions continues to soften as customers virtualize workloads and consolidate onto more efficient platforms.

Storage revenue declined 20 percent year to year, with double-digit declines in both disk and tape.

Overall, Systems and Technology results reflect the challenge of this economic environment.

IBM clearly is having success poaching Unix customers from competitors--no doubt due to the awesomeness of the POWER6 processors and IBM's Power Systems hardware. The point? Unix competition gives IBM customers it can snatch from competitors. IBM i doesn't have any similar competitors.

What About Software

Moving on to software, IBM's $4.5 billion of revenue was down 6 percent year to year--but up 2 percent at constant currency. Most notably, Loughridge's comments reflect IBM's efforts to snag fast ROI software sales, as well as the company's appreciation of recurring revenue from software:

Customers continued to purchase mission critical software to run their businesses. And demand was strong for software that delivers fast returns on investment, while adoption of software for transformational projects slowed, and non-essential purchases were heavily scrutinized. . . .

Across all software brands, we have strong recurring revenue; in fact, annuity content represents two-thirds of our software business. This provides a good base of profit, and helped our software business to deliver solid performance in this tough environment.

And the layoffs?

This quarter our workforce rebalancing charges were about $265 million, most of which was for our services business. We expect to spend between $300 million and $400 million globally for the full year, which is a typical level of restructuring for us, and as we said a lot of this was skewed to the first part of the year. Since most of this is behind us, the benefits of these actions will start to come through in the second quarter.

Go Big or Go Home

For high-end customers, IBM appears to be doing exceedingly well.

We signed 16 deals larger than $100 million, and that's on top of the 24 deals larger than $100 million that we signed in fourth quarter last year.

Wow. That's more than $4 billion from just 40 customers.

Posted by cmaxcer on April 22, 2009 at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)

April 21, 2009 4:39 PM

The Road to COMMON

This year's COMMON Annual Meeting and Exposition in Reno, Nevada is somewhat of an enigma. On one hand, it's simply the year's premier event for the IBM i/System i/iSeries professional, and it happens to include a user group meeting, gobs of education, a solution provider expo, and some industry innovation awards, along with a tangential IT Executive Conference and a 5k Run/Walk and blood drive charity event. As if that weren't enough, there's still more, and that's where the enigma comes in.

Fittingly enough with its Reno location, there's some wild cards thrown into the COMMON mix this year. First, Reno is located on the western side of the U.S., which is on the light side of the country's population base. Will fewer IT pros cross the continental divide this year? Hard to say. After all, COMMON only has one large conference each year now, so more people might attend.

But what about our faltering economy? Might companies slash travel budgets? It's entirely possible, but then again the cost of travel has dipped, and the room rate at the Grand Sierra Resort and Casino is by far more affordable than it has been at many a COMMON in years past.

So the outside forces at play this year may or may not cancel each other out.

Elections on the Table

Meanwhile, COMMON has its own business to conduct, and front and center are elections for the COMMON Board of Directors: Bruce "Hoss" Collins, Richard Dolewski, Leo Lefebvre, Pete Massiello, and Trevor Perry are COMMON's candidates for the 2009 Board of Directors election. The five will vie for three open positions. Electronic voting will continue through 5 p.m. April 28, 2009, but COMMON members will be able to vote on site.

And why are the elections so important this year?

COMMON--and its membership--are clearly facing big changes in its ecosystem. With last year's big-boom announcement of IBM's newly unified System i and System p into Power Systems, the new IBM i world has been left spinning. A new name, new boxes, new options, and new price points--it's all still shaking out for most i-focused shops. How will COMMON embrace the new Power Systems world? AIX-focused professionals? How can COMMON help ensure that the major investments companies are making . . . continue to pay off in the short and long term?

COMMON is in a unique position of power to shape how IBM responds to customer need (and sometimes, desire). And more importantly, COMMON may also be able to provide resources and guidance to companies as they navigate through rocky landscapes.

Off to a Great Start

As for education, there are 58 brand new i-specific sessions this year, as well as a new lab. Let's say that again: 58 new i-specific sessions. That's pretty amazing, really, when you consider that some conferences don't even have that many sessions in total. Plus, there are 39 sessions specific to those interested in AIX.

Oh, and one more thing: there are 17 brand new speakers this year, too. Of course, we're not sure if COMMON is counting its keynote speaker, but no matter--the keynote should be quite interesting indeed: Jeff Jonas, chief scientist of the IBM Entity Analytics group and an IBM Distinguished Engineer, will present "Cops and Robbers Las Vegas Style." Attendees should get a wonderful peek into the wild west security efforts employed by Nevada casinos.

And What About IBM?

Speaking of the keynote, what might we hear from IBM? Ross Mauri, general manager of IBM Power Systems, will be there, and while he's set to announce the 2009 COMMON/IBM Power Systems Innovation Awards, along with COMMON President Randy Dufault, what might he have to share after the awards? Certainly he'll have something to say. Will he talk about sales and marketing efforts? Hot technology advances? IBM's vision for the long-term direction of Power Systems? And what about the nascent IBM Smart Market, Smart Business, Smart Cubes? Might IBM i become a significant player in IBM's newest go-to-market model? Or might IBM have little to say at all?

In any event, after the cards are cut, IBM will show its hand in Reno . . . and we're looking forward to it!

Posted by cmaxcer on April 21, 2009 at 4:39 PM | Comments (0)