System iNetwork

March 2005

March 20, 2005 12:30 PM

R.S. Tipton Article – March iSeries News

I found this article titled 'What's an iSeries Professional To Do' not only an interesting read, but one that struck a chord with me. Why? I have been doing some hard thinking about my career.

I have been in IT for a long time – more than 25 years with over 20 years since I first got my hands on a System/38. I have learnt a lot on the way, done some hard work, at times earned some good money, and – I hope – shared some of my knowledge both with people I have worked with and through the pages of the magazine.

But in the past couple of years finding freelance work got very difficult. So difficult that after over a year of unemployment I took another job – still IT related but miles away from the iSeries. Now I feel that it will be a big hurdle to jump to get back into iSeries. But the question for me is: would it be worth it?

Bob expresses the arguments better than I can reproduce here but, with IBM appearing to homogenize all their server brands, the iSeries appears to be losing its distinctive, and attractive, niche. That means the demand for the type of work that I could do, exploiting the skills I have, will decline.

My current job has been somewhat of an eye opener. The organisation I work for had a seminar which included presentations from Microsoft. From this we learnt, and have subsequently purchased for our office, that we could buy a Microsoft 'Action Pack' for £199 (say $300). When this arrived, it was a box with folders containing a large number of CDs for many (most?) Microsoft products – worth thousands at retail prices. Amazing value. It is no wonder there are so many with the Microsoft skills pushing Microsoft solutions. And it all runs on cheap PC hardware.

How much do I need to spend to get the equivalent iSeries solution? Thousands? Ten Thousand? Twenty Thousand? Totally unaffordable for an independent developer. Therefore there are few independent developers pushing the iSeries.

Alas poor iSeries, I knew him well…

Posted by on March 20, 2005 at 12:30 PM | Comments (3)

March 7, 2005 1:11 PM

Notes from a far country - SEO.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a topic that interests me as it is one of the factors on which I advise my clients (who are small and micro businesses).

So I was interested to read in the UK weekly computer press a report about this regarding some of the top UK listed companies. The report stated that more than ¾ of the FTSE 100 companies fail to appear in the top 10 search listings.

The companies that fail to appear in the first 3 pages of Google searches include Telecoms and Mobile phone companies, banks and financial firms. Interestingly tobacco companies (tobacco advertising is banned in the UK) fare better than average.

For my clients, I emphasise that it is hard, and ongoing, work getting to the top three pages and staying there. Just creating the website is no guarantee of success (it would probably be a guarantee of failure!). There are whole websites dedicated to analysing search engines. With many of these you have to pay to get the detailed analysis.

The classic case I relate to my clients is that of a client of a colleague of mine.

My colleague reports that her client, who runs a holiday cottage in Mid Wales, spends hours every week researching the latest information on SEO on the web, then optimising her web site in the light of this research. The result is that her cottage is often on the first, or first 3 pages of a Google search. The end result is that her cottage is fully booked – which is the objective of her website.

So it is interesting to see that non-IT specialists can compete with the bigger players and specialists when it comes to the Internet.

A case of everyone is equal on the web?

Posted by on March 7, 2005 at 1:11 PM | Comments (3)