System iNetwork

May 2007

May 31, 2007 12:11 PM

The Missing PHP Content

I recently did a Q&A with Don Denoncourt about how PHP fits into a System i world, which I encourage you to download and listen to — Don is a sharp guy with tons of Java, WebSphere, and System i experience, and he can cover a lot of ground in an easily understandable way.

You won't get our entire session in the podcast, though, because we had to make some tough cutting decisions to pare down the length; however, the remaining content is still great, and I've posted it here.

In the normally published podcast, Don covers the basics of PHP, the history and a brief description of the language, the Java-related considerations, the LAMP stack and how the System i and DB2 fits into it, as well as what System i programmers should do if they want to get started with PHP.

The content we cut, which is only available on Maxed Out, covers OS/400-specific PHP APIs, IDEs, and PHP frameworks. Enjoy!

Posted by cmaxcer on May 31, 2007 at 12:11 PM | Comments (0)

May 30, 2007 8:59 AM

Secure Perspective Enters the World

IBM has announced and released its Secure Perspective for System i, the new security tool designed to let business leaders create security policies using non-technical language. The tool was developed by IBM first for the System i, and I provide a bit of background on it in a previous Maxed Out post.

The tool is groundbreaking because it may be the first tool that's geared to help non-techies create security policies. Most often these days, IT pros get saddled with making decisions about which kinds of employees should have access to data, which can lead to assumptions that may or may not be most desirable. More importantly, instead of storing security policies in your head, Secure Perspective helps create a security policy that can be used to measure and prove compliance.

IBM Secure Perspective is available now for $1,500 per managed processor, which includes the first year of software maintenance. IBM has a demo at http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/i/security/secureperspective/index.html.

Side Note

IBM gave a nod to the System i in its press release, touting its legendary security, and suggesting that this security is the reason IBM delivered Secure Perspective for the System i first. Here's a couple cool graphs:

The IBM System i platform is the first IBM platform to run Secure Perspective because the legendary security of i5/OS is among the most advanced in the industry and able to support Secure Perspective with few adjustments. The sophisticated, object-based security of i5/OS is referred to as data-centric security, meaning it has inherent data protection mechanisms so users secure data at the object or file level. Among other things, this helps protect against files converting themselves to programs — a common source of Trojan horse-style viruses.

"Suppose you are running a run-the-business application on System i. The i5/OS on which that application depends is exceptionally robust and secure, and handles more of the features that you need (including administrative tasks) than, say, Linux or Windows," wrote Wayne Kernochan, Senior Analyst at Illuminata, in a recent paper. "So, on average, your application, itself, will be more robust, secure, and easy to administer. Almost two decades of System i user experience show this to be a real, and not just theoretical, benefit."

Posted by cmaxcer on May 30, 2007 at 8:59 AM | Comments (0)

May 29, 2007 8:49 AM

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

The recent POWER6 developments on the System p sparked some interesting comments about processor power and the needs of the System i world — basically that the System i community doesn't have the same kinds of power-cosumption needs as the Unix world. I wrote about this topic late last year, and the article appeared in the January issue of System iNEWS.

Here's a relevant excerpt:

Exploring System i's Excess Power

Is the System i world somehow less able to recover from processor improvements? As the PC server world, for example, has tended to grow horizontally, has the System i community grown up — vertically — into a bigger machine that can do more than before? Yes. Although this doesn't mean that System i customers are downgrading into less expensive (but more powerful) boxes, it does mean that the growth tends to stick within fewer, larger boxes. Capacity on Demand is a prime example of this. Take, for example, the notion that one Windows server is used to run one basic workload even if overall CPU utilization is fairly low. If a company wants to grow those Windows applications, there's a good chance that the business will simply add another server, whether it's a standalone or blade, and keep adding new servers to meet new growth. My point isn't that server proliferation is a bad management practice; rather, I'm saying that server growth in these kinds of organizations rewards low commodity pricing by manufacturers. Does it ever and will it ever come back to bite these manufacturers? You bet.

In the System i community, on the other hand, you simply use Capacity on Demand. Turn on another processor, and boom, you have an instant upgrade. Here's where it bites IBM: If a company knew that it would experience 20 percent growth every year in processing needs, it would lease a system that was powerful enough to last three years, allowing a bit of headroom in case something unforeseen came up. So for the first two years, processor utilization would be pretty low, which would mean that the business was paying for processing power it wasn't using — bad for the customer, good for IBM. Now that a customer can make a lease decision based on performance pictures for the first, second, and third years, by turning on additional processors only when necessary and by factoring in things such as retail holiday sales bursts, the customer can pay less overall for performance.

So, when you look at massive leaps in processing power for the System i world, does this actually hurt IBM? If a 525 is vastly more powerful than a 520, for example, and less expensive, and if the need for processor power is far less than what IBM actually delivers, isn't IBM in the position of creating more machine for far less money?

That's just another reason to focus the POWER6 on the Unix world. If Unix is constantly hungry for more power . . . but the System i world is relatively not as hungry . . . no wonder IBM has had a tough time making quarterly financial reports that show positive revenue growth for the System i group.

Sure, every hardware manufacturer has this same problem, but I can't help but believe it hits the System i harder than others.

Posted by cmaxcer on May 29, 2007 at 8:49 AM | Comments (1)

May 24, 2007 8:08 AM

Can Your i Get Any Greener?

Earlier this month, IBM announced a sweeping new plan to advance energy efficient technology and services. Called "Project Big Green," the IBM initiative focuses on energy-guzzling corporate data centers, as well as IBM's own data centers.

The company reallocated $1 billion for Project Big Green and laid out a plan with key solutions, some of which are partner-driven, to diagnose, build, virtualize, manage, and cool data centers to dramatically improve energy efficiency.

Today, according to analyst firm IDC, IBM reports, roughly 50 cents is spent on energy for every dollar of computer hardware. This is expected to increase by 54 percent to 71 cents over the next four years.

By using IBM's current green strategies and set of solutions, IBM says energy savings can be substantial: for an average 25,000 square foot data center, clients should be able to achieve 42 percent energy savings.

The Math

I covered this topic in-depth about a year ago, and as you might guess, IBM sees the biggest gains for larger businesses. How many System iNetwork readers have a System i sitting in a 25,000 square foot sea of other servers? How big is your "data center"?

While the System i is used by the vast majority of Fortune 1000 customers, I would be astounded if the bulk of the market sees an energy problem related directly to its System i infrastructure. For starters, SMBs running the System i are less likely to have out-of-control Windows server proliferation issues, and the System i tends to be more energy-efficient because it tends to run more workloads at a higher level of processor usage (instead of multiple servers consuming energy to sit nearly idle much of the time).

A year ago, some larger System i shops were concerned that they might not have energy available in their data center because they couldn't physically wire-in any additional power — the other servers were gobbling it all up. It's an amusing image — unless you're the person in charge of the i.

Green and Green

In any event, there's two points: if there's money to be saved, most organizations will go green just to realize the cost savings. For most System i-focused organizations, I suspect the cost savings to be radically lower than what could be gained by conserving energy in Windows, Unix, and Linux-heavy organizations. Agree or disagree? Where's the upside for System i-focused shops?

Server Consolidation and Power6

IBM's Big Green play isn't altruistic. The company sees revenue opportunity here, and much of it will be in the form of pushing its own server consolidation/virtualization hardware, software, and services, which tend to be more useful and profitable when consolidating Windows, Unix, and Linux.

Charles King, principal analyst for Pund-IT, attended IBM's Big Green launch event in New York. I asked him how the System i played into IBM's green strategy:

"System i did come up, mostly related to the use and efficiency of power virtualization technology for server consolidation. Since virtualization was a key message in the announcement, Systems z and x got more emphasis than either Systems i or p. That was really a matter of the mainframe's sheer virtualization muscle and the popularity of VMware for the System x," he reported. "Given the sophisticated power management capabilities of Power6, I expect energy efficiency to be a key message around System i as the platform incorporates the new processors."

The Power6 essentially doubles processing power without increasing energy consumption.

Still, right now, I wonder how many System i pros are feeling the energy heat and responsibility? Is energy efficiency of interest to any System i manager? Any pain? Or is the topic merely shrug-worthy?

Posted by cmaxcer on May 24, 2007 at 8:08 AM | Comments (1)

May 22, 2007 11:51 AM

There's a Reason the p Got the Screamin' POWER6 First

If the System p and System i share essentially the same hardware, and if the System i will also get the POWER6 processor, what gives with the System p getting all the press yesterday?

IBM's press release "IBM Unleashes World's Fastest Chip in Powerful New Computer" set the stage for the world, and many IT news outlets followed IBM's lead, reporting on the chip's design, speed, the System p 570, and comparison to HP and Sun Unix servers.

For IBM, mission accomplished: massive dissemination of POWER6 news.

Basically, IBM's new POWER6 chip is a 64-bit, dual-core processor with 790 million transistors running at up to 4.7 GHz and eight megabytes of on-chip Level 2 cache. It gets approximately twice the speed as previous generation chips with virtually no increase in energy consumption, and it's based on IBM's smaller 65 nanometer chip design. It's wicked fast.

Why No i?

But why is the i only briefly mentioned? Couldn't IBM have touted much of the same speed improvements and news with the System i?

You bet IBM could have, but it would surely have changed the nature of the news, cluttered the message, and would have resulted in much less impact.

Playing Hardball

The bottom line is that IBM has achieved great success in gaining Unix market share with the System p, often at the cost of HP and Sun. In fact, IBM goes to great pains to call out HP and Sun in the press release, and you can bet the company did the same thing when it talked to industry analysts and reporters in any pre-release briefings. Here's a snip from the release:

The processor speed of the POWER6 chip is nearly three times faster than the latest HP Itanium processor that runs HP's server line. Even more impressive, the processor bandwidth of the POWER6 chip — 300 gigabytes per second — could download the entire iTunes catalog in about 60 seconds — 30 times faster than HP's Itanium.

Did you notice the bit about the iTunes catalog? IBM has learned that if it can use a highly popular tech culture example, even if there's no applicable method for transferring the entire iTunes catalog, it gets more industry-wide press, and will more likely be used by reporters in conjunction with HP.

Then, to push the virtualization and server-consolidation message, IBM cuts to a Sun comparison and then slaps both HP and Sun by citing an IDC study on market share:

IBM calculates that 30 SunFire v890s can be consolidated into a single rack of the new IBM machine, saving more than $100,000 per year on energy costs. According to IDC, IBM has gained 10.4 points of UNIX revenue share in the past five years versus HP's loss of 5.3 points and Sun's loss of 1.4 points. IBM will use the new machine to target customers with less-efficient HP, Sun, and Dell servers.

The implication is clear: HP and Sun are slow, and if that's not enough, they're losing market share, too, which means more businesses are moving to IBM and the System p, and don't you want to run on a System p, too?

Plus, the performance gains really are spectacular, and competition in the Unix space is fierce. With the System i, IBM doesn't really have any direct head-to-head competitors, a fact that makes it hard for the System i to really shine.

If the System i were a banana, you could argue that it's the best fruit. But if a big part of the world is arguing over who has the biggest orange, can IBM expect to gain by saying its bananas are bigger than oranges from HP and Sun?

Posted by cmaxcer on May 22, 2007 at 11:51 AM | Comments (18)

May 18, 2007 1:45 PM

IBM Adds Concurrent User Pricing to 515-525

In response to customer and Business Partner feedback, IBM has amended the licensing terms and conditions on the 515 and 525 so that customers can pay under a concurrently authenticated user's model for infrequent types of i5/OS access.

Basically, this change will not affect organizations with straightforward and consistent end-user access, but it can significantly reduce the cost for others.

"The move to unleashing the performance has been very popular, as has the move to user licensing, but in a number of situations, customers were looking for additional flexibility that we could provide by charging by concurrent user," Ian Jarman, IBM System i product manager, says.

"For example, if you're a manufacturing company, with people doing accounting and so on, it's very fair to be charging for the value of i5/OS individually, and named users works very well. But if you have 400 people on a factory floor sharing five devices and inputing data occasionally, it makes sense not to be charging for those floor workers individually. People wanted the combination, really, of the two," he notes.

Other examples include retail point-of-sale terminals that might be shared by many different people working on those terminals — or school districts or local governments — basically any organization that has infrequent users is likely to benefit from this change.

"The bottom line is, there are many situations where named users works very well, and for those companies it's simple and so on, but by extending the flexibility of moving to concurrent usage, this helps other customers move into the 515 and 525 structure," Jarman explains. "What's helped us is that ISVs have brought us very specific examples of their customers and how their applications work — there are many different things going on out there as you might expect, so we have to be flexible, have to be adaptable."

The change is effective immediately, and it's retroactive for the few customers who have already purchased the 515 and 525. If you've got "infrequent users" and might benefit from concurrent user pricing, your IBM sales representative, ISV, or reseller should be able to help you nail down the best price.

Since many ISVs already charge with a concurrent user model, it's very easy for them to go to market with a similar method for charging for i5/OS — it gives them an easy-to-line-up and understand total package price.

"A transition like this, it's such a significant transition, you're unlikely to get it 100 percent correct the first time," Jarman says. "We believe the most important thing is to react quickly and positively toward the customer and partner feedback."

Posted by cmaxcer on May 18, 2007 at 1:45 PM | Comments (2)

May 17, 2007 8:01 AM

IBM Will Change the 515-525 Pricing Model

I don't have any details yet, but I will tomorrow when I meet with IBM's System i Product Manager Ian Jarman. IBM is changing the pricing models on its System i Express boxes, which include the new 515, 525, and older 520.

At COMMON earlier this month, many System i customers had a hard time understanding the user-based pricing model on the 515 and 525 as it might apply to their own organizations — it turns out there's a wider variety of "users" than you might imagine.

In addition, the current pricing model for the 515 and 525 seems to have produced mixed results for our readers. Some have reported that upgrading from an 810 or a 520 into a 525 would cost significantly more than upgrading to an "older" 520, while others have reported significant savings. See "Is There a Looming 520 Phase-Out Crisis?" for some background.

The price changes may or may not reflect current upgrade scenarios — they could be more focused on initial sales to new customers or simply focused on the 520. Either way, here's the deal: We don't often run news stories on Fridays, but we will tomorrow. Check back at Maxed Out for details — I'll post them as soon as I have them.

Posted by cmaxcer on May 17, 2007 at 8:01 AM | Comments (0)

May 15, 2007 10:04 AM

Aldon Gets Acquired, Launches Plan for Growth

There are two common ways that private equity firms look to make a profit when they purchase software companies:

1. They buy a company, remove much of the staff, reduce operational costs by slashing marketing and sales, and end up with a product or maintenance revenue stream that is suddenly highly profitable — for a short period of time, at least, before the company's dwindling assets get split, sold, or fall off the face of the earth. Sometimes, when this happens, the company puts on a joyous face of rapture over the acquisition as a way to hide the impending destruction realignment.
2. They buy a company, sometimes beleaguered and sometimes not, and start growing it by pumping in investment dollars in the form of product enhancements, additional acquisitions to supplement existing products, or go-to-market teams. Sometimes they, too, make layoffs and eliminate inefficiencies, but most definitely it's with an eye toward a bigger future that will eventually take the new company public or lead it to a new sale that returns the invested amounts, along with a tidy profit, in a 3-to-5-year time frame.

Aldon, a leading software change-management System i-focused vendor, is most definitely the second.

But How Do You Know?

Initial acquisitions, under both common formats, often appear the same to the outside world, but in the first method noted above, the company simply can't keep up the charade for more than a few months. They say they are interested in growth, but there's no evidence of growth — no acquisitions, no real or compelling product enhancements, and certainly no new products.

In the second, the company buys other companies, enhances products, pours development into new products, works out better go-to-market strategies, and hires new talent. In addition, the company stays in touch with the relevant media outlets in its market and is eager to talk about its new efforts, the results, and to share its excitement for the both the market and what the company is up to.

The acquisition of disaster-recovery and high-availability providers Visions Solutions and iTera by Thomma Cressey Equity Partners is one example of the second sort of acquisition. The new company is buzzing with activity, and company leaders are willing and eager to step up with proof points that share exactly what they're up to with anyone who will listen.

Let me say it again: Aldon is the second sort of acquisition.

The proof, of course, will reveal itself over the next year. So why do I think this? Marlin Equity Partners, which is the company that acquired Aldon, is a fairly new organization, but it appears to be in the business of building companies and selling them for profit. The managing director, David McGovern, comes from the Gores Technology Group, which is a large private equity group that was responsible for reviving SSA when it was tanking in the System i industry. SSA, as you might remember, rose from the ashes through a series of acquisitions and positive business investments.

Then, of course, there's my conversation with Dan Magid, former CEO of Aldon, and Matt Scholl, president and COO of Aldon. Magid, by the way, will remain with Aldon as a consultant who will look to help Aldon execute its growth strategy.

A Bit of History

"This really started a year ago as we were looking at our product plan and figuring out the things we needed to do to satisfy the requirements of our customers as they were taking advantage of all the new technologies — moving into multi-platform, web development, Windows development, service-oriented architecture," explains Magid. "As all these were happening, the list of things we needed to do started to grow rapidly, and we were looking at some very large projects. As we looked at the development schedule of how long it was going to take us to do those things, it looked like it was going to take us too long to get our customers what it was they wanted."

So Aldon started thinking about buying other companies that had solutions it could acquire and wrap into its application lifecycle management suite.

"We found that a lot of the organizations were bigger than we could swallow, so we didn't have the resources to do that [acquire other companies] and began to look for financial partners who could help us execute on this kind of strategy," Magid says.

According to Scholl, Aldon then sought a partner or buyer who had the financial backing and interest to work with Aldon on its growth plans. A deal with UNICOM Systems, Scholl says, which is the company that went on to acquire SoftLanding Systems, did not work out. However, a deal with Marlin Equity Partners did work out.

So What's Next?

Aldon is currently seeking solutions to add to its change-management system but can't identify the possible companies and products yet.

"We've been the largest provider of change-management systems in the System i marketplace, and what we want to do is provide our System i customers with more things as they are moving into new technology areas," Magid says. "The marketplace for the traditional System i management is pretty mature, but the marketplace for the things they are doing around their System i applications, building web interfaces and web applications around their iSeries code or building Windows interfaces or putting services that talk to their traditional iSeries applications . . . that is changing and moving forward very rapidly. We want to be able to provide our customers with solutions in that kind of arena."

Specifically, Aldon is looking into potential testing tools, business process automation tools that help companies work through the business process changes that coincide with new software application rollouts, build process tools for the open source environment, and tools that manage non-DB2 database changes.

"Our strategy is to be like an ERP system for the IT application development and management organization," Magid says.

The proof, of course, will show through in the coming months as we hear from Aldon customers, see new acquisitions, and hear the company communicate its product roadmap to the industry it serves.

Posted by cmaxcer on May 15, 2007 at 10:04 AM | Comments (2)

May 10, 2007 8:31 AM

BCD, PHP, Zend — and an App Dev Can of Worms

Long-time application development tool provider BCD has maintained a focus on the System i for decades. Although many other tool providers have turned to other platforms, BCD kept its sights firmly on the i.

"Keeping people on the platform has always been our focus," Eric Figura, BCD's director of sales and marketing, said at COMMON last week. I sat in on the BCD press conference with our Senior Products Editor John Ghrist, who covers BCD and other application development vendors in "COMMON Anaheim Vendors Offer More App Modernization Tools." BCD announced WebSmart PHP, which lets System i developers build PHP applications.

I've talked to Figura off and on over the years, and I've seen the company consistently produce solid and respectable tools. Like many System i-focused solution providers, BCD is, of course, an advertiser in System i NEWS and on SystemiNetwork.com. I'm pretty much disinterested in that fact but thought you should know lest anyone think this post is about that — it's not. It's about BCD's focus on the i, which I do care about.

Despite BCD's goal to keep organizations on the platform, particularly at the height of IBM's WebSphere push, BCD had little connection with IBM. In fact BCD competed with WebSphere by positioning WebSmart as leaner, easier, and more affordable.

As you might guess, IBM and BCD didn't talk much during those years.

Sure, BCD was listed in IBM's tools programs and the like, but those programs seemed to be more of a nod to other tools' existence than any real endorsement. IBM appears to now recognize BCD's value, and it may have come after BCD saved a large and visible System i account for IBM. I agreed not to mention names, but the deal is, a big beverage maker had some issues with the System i relating to web development efforts and was considering ditching the platform until BCD helped them deliver some really useful web applications.

Consequently, BCD has been able to tap into IBM resources and become more known within IBM. Elaine Lennox, IBM's vice president of System i marketing, stopped in on BCD's press conference at COMMON just long enough to say that IBM is excited about BCD's new PHP tool, etc, etc. The important point here is that she, a vice president, actually stopped by, which in the decade that I've been covering this industry is as rare as a four-leaf clover.

So What About Zend?

Zend, of course, brought PHP to the System i world, and the company has its own development stack. Fortunately, the company realizes that more is often merrier. Jim Dillard, Zend's IBM alliance manager, says that Zend is pleased to have BCD support PHP and basically knows that having more System i customers develop with PHP will lead to more sales of Zend Platform for i5/OS.

So, what's the point of all this?

Simple. A year ago BCD made the decision to forge ahead with PHP, putting considerable investments into its WebSmart IDE, and it did it without knowing if the System i world would embrace PHP. But it knew PHP could be important to the System i, so the company went ahead anyway. Now, in June, BCD will release a beta with delivery of a shipping product later this year.

Despite the 5,000 Zend downloads you may have heard about, BCD is way ahead of significant PHP use on System i, and BCD knows it. If PHP does become a hit on the System i, it'll happen because it will be all about business applications — not because PHP-based wikis are cool. IBM and Zend both see this and if it happens, BCD will be there . . . if not help it along.

Can of Worms

OK, now that I've focused on a single company and a tool that hasn't even been released yet, what do you think are the most important System i development trends and tools of 2007?

Although BCD might be an early contender for PHP-related development, what about SOA? Advanced BusinessLink just released Strategi SOA, a System i-native framework for developing applications/components that can be exposed as web services. System i shops are all over the map right now when it comes to using web services, but clearly the IT industry as a whole has embraced SOA and web services strategies. I wrote, "7 Reasons SOA Will Rock Your World" last year, and it's still relevant for all seven reasons. It's published in the July 2006 issue of iSeries NEWS (before the name change to System iNEWS).

Another great thing about SOA is that it makes application development tool choices less risky — because of SOA's prevalence, no one will be able to ignore it for long, making it easier to expose newly created applications as services. No matter what you do on the System i these days, it's becoming almost impossible to develop yourself into a dead-end.

Or maybe I'm wrong about that last sentence. . . . Come on — post your comments and we'll get at the heart of the matter!

Posted by cmaxcer on May 10, 2007 at 8:31 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 9, 2007 9:38 AM

System i Team Leads with Next-Generation Security Tool

Remember the new Secure Perspective security tool that IBM announced about a month ago? The one that was buried in the 515 and 525 announcements?

Get this: the tool may be the first of its kind in the world, and it came from our System i team in Rochester.

Secure Perspective for System i is a natural language policy-based security tool that lets you use natural language phrases in a wizard-like approach to define and lock security policies.

IBM's Dan Kolz, who works on policy-based security issues in Rochester, says Secure Perspective is innovative because it's designed to let business managers define security policies. It's as simple as creating statements like, "Accountants can update accounting data," he notes, which would then be mapped to underlying System i object security rules.

As far as Kolz knows, IBM is the first to have produced a natural language parsing security tool of this nature. John Earl, PowerTech's chief technology officer, who is familiar with Secure Perspective, agrees.

PowerTech, by the way, doesn't see Secure Perspective as a competitor to the company's own tools or services and has used the tool with its clients already.

"Policy is the missing link in security," Earl says. Particularly when it comes to auditors and regulatory compliance, Secure Perspective is handy because it helps a company define a policy. "Compliance is really the act of measuring against a policy," Earl explains.

Turning Security Over to Your Business

"Systems administrators have been determining policy, and you really want to make that a business decision," Earl says. Some System i pros may have a hard time relinquishing detailed control, Earl notes, but he believes that administrators can better spend their time on the technical aspects rather than figuring out who should have access to what.

In Secure Perspective, after you create and select your natural language rules, the tool will generate a list of possible problems. For example, by providing access to one type of accounting data, you could inadvertently remove access to another kind of data — depending on your definitions and environment. If you make a mistake, Secure Perspective also lets you quickly revert to the previous settings.

For more detail, check out http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/i/security/.

IBM says it will likely end up rolling out an enterprise-wide solution based on Secure Perspective for System i but capable of working across a variety of platforms and data stores.

Posted by cmaxcer on May 9, 2007 at 9:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 7, 2007 8:38 AM

Innovation Challenge Attracts Three Dozen New Schools

IBM's System i Innovation Challenge, which is the team-based competition for higher education students that IBM launched earlier this year, attracted 100 teams from 50 different colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada.

What's really cool is that three dozen of those 50 schools don't have a relationship with the System i Academic Initiative, which means that IBM's contest reached students and schools that weren't already interested in the System i.

The grand prize winner is a team from Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The team — made up of students Julie Gavin, Wesley Fagan, Michael Jozaitis, and George Zimmerman, with faculty advisor Dr. Rex Dumdum — won a trip to Nintendo in Redmond, Washington to see the System i in action. Nintendo is a longtime System i customer.

In the final stage of the competition, the students had to develop an innovative System i application, and the team from Marywood developed a Web-based vacation planning tool.

Because of the success, IBM plans to introduce a similar competition to college and university students in many countries across Europe in the fall of 2007.

What I find particularly interesting about the competition is how IBM's geo-based networking efforts are permeating throughout the organization. For instance, in IBM's Vertical Industry Program (VIP), IBM is building micro-industry niches, perfecting the go-to-market strategy for the niche, and then replicating it around the world.

With education, IBM is doing the same thing (see my previous post): combining local business partners, System i customers, and schools to create an education ecosystem, which IBM then tries to replicate around the world.

It's not so much that these strategies are new . . . it's just that I've been seeing and hearing a commonality across IBM that hasn't existed in the past, which is a consistent focus on establishing System i "networks" around the world. It's coming out verbally as well as through IBM's actions, all of which is just one more reason that I'm optimistic that 2007 will be a pivotal year for the System i.

Posted by cmaxcer on May 7, 2007 at 8:38 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 3, 2007 9:43 AM

IBM Reinvigorates Academic Initiative

The IBM System i Academic Initiative is picking up steam these days, which is very good news. Related programs at IBM a couple of years ago were cooling off — along with the economy in the United States — and the System i world was losing schools, student participation, and i-related jobs all at the same time.

We met with Linda Grigoleit, IBM's System i education program director, and Elaine Lennox, IBM's vice president of System i marketing, at COMMON to discuss the recent momentum.

"We increased our investment levels right when we were announcing the Initiative for Innovation . . . back to three years ago," Lennox notes. "Since then we have invested a lot of money and time into getting up-to-date curriculum into the universities and colleges and at this point, our latest count is that we have 20,000-plus students learning System i skills today, in 25 countries."

Academic Ecosystems

IBM is now much more collaborative with curriculum design, and has been working directly with schools and area business partners to develop the kinds of coursework the area employers need most. In addition, IBM says System i "communities" are supporting the schools in the form of guest lecturers and real-world projects for students to work on.

The primary goal is to create academic networks or ecosystems throughout the world that provide end-to-end education and jobs.

"We have enough students coming out of these programs that we can solve the skills gap in the marketplace, but now it's a question of how do you connect a with b, skilled students with employers, how do we make this work?" Lennox says. "So we've implemented what we call Academic Networks. The concept is you take a local college and you bring in a set of partners, a set of clients, and you develop a local ecosystem, a teaming agreement locally, to get jobs created for these students."

And jobs is the key. Smaller colleges, particularly tech colleges, are keenly interested in being able to place their students in jobs, and it's a vicious circle that's hard to break whenever it goes awry — no jobs, no students, no students, no jobs.

"The schools, when they hear jobs, and they see them in their local community, they are much more interested in teaching System i in their education," Grigoleit notes.

I am very pleased to see these changes, and I'm particularly happy to see that IBM's System i group recognizes that jobs and education are a critical component — worthy of investment — of System i success. This is an area of marketing that's not as instantly visible as Super Bowl television ads, but it's supremely more effective toward the long-term health of the entire i ecosystem.

A Few More Details

IBM is also helping organize System i Career Days and is launching iSummits that bring universities together with IBM, local System i clients and business partners to discuss skill requirements and university curriculum in a roundtable format.

For example, IBM held an iSummit at Gateway Technical College in Kenosha, Wisconsin in April. More than 35 people from IBM, the college, the local System i users group and nearby businesses like Superior Carrier discussed which skills are most in demand in the community and how to connect students with local companies ready to hire.

IBM says other recent iSummits occurred at schools including the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, Fairleigh Dickinson University, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Other iSummits in the future will include roundtables at Mt. San Antonio College, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the IT University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Also of note, the higher education programs in Europe, for example, are often more closely tied to governments that have a hand in curriculum development.

For example, in the UK, IBM recently nailed down an agreement where the UK is developing a curriculum that it will then deploy this fall in about three dozen new schools in one fell swoop.

Posted by cmaxcer on May 3, 2007 at 9:43 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack