Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Great Resources to Sell IBM i to Your Boss

Check out these awesome podcasts, Powerpoint presentations and videos to help you sell IBM i and Power Systems to your company.  You will need to register a PartnerWorld id to view these.

http://bit.ly/k1RJtA

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

IBM Champion Program - Wow!

Well, this is very surprising to say the least.  I, along with 49 other folks, have been named IBM Champions for Collaborative Solutions.  I figured my chances would be spread thin a bit compared to most nominees as I do most of my chest beating regarding "Domino on IBM i" solutions, so my evangelism is more of a hybrid of Power Systems and Lotus.

I feel very humble to be included with a names who've given me much more knowledge than I've been able to give back so far.  Hopefully I can return the favor.  :)

Congratulations to you all!

The 2011 IBM Champions for Collaboration Solutions:

Bill Malchisky
Bruce Elgort
Carlos Casas
CheeChin Liew
Chris Miller
Chris Toohey
Daniel Recio
David Leedy
David Stephens
Declan Lynch
Eileen Fitzgerald
Eric Mack
Femke Goedhart
Francie Tanner
Gabriella Davis
Giuseppe Grasso
Handly Cameron
John Head
Julian Robichaux

Kenio Carvalho
Lidia Vikulova
Lisa Duke
Marie Scott
Mark Leusink
Mathew Newman
Matt White
Mikkel Heisterberg
Mitch Cohen
Mitsuru Kato
Nathan T Freeman
Paul Mooney
Paul Withers
Rob Bontekoe
Rob Novak
Sanjaya Kumar Saxena
Serdar Basegmez
Sharon Bellamy
Simon Vaughan
Sjaak Ursinus
Steve Pitcher
Stuart McIntyre
Theo Heselmans
Thomas Duff
Tim Tripcony
Ulrich Krause
Warren Elsmore
Yancy Lent
Yoshihiro Matsuo
Yoshio Maruyama

Saturday, June 18, 2011

You're not still on V5R4 are you?

Based on this blog's traffic the IBM i 6.1 upgrade planning checklist is the 3rd highest viewed page.  That's encouraging!  It's nice to know people are looking at moving to the newer operating systems.  It's also a little expected because it people may be moving because end of support for V5R4 is on the horizon, instead of moving to take advantage of new features.  I was at a conference many years ago where Frank Soltis joked about the difference between iSeries and pSeries customers.  He said that pSeries customers upgraded to the latest AIX version as soon as it was released while iSeries customers upgraded to the 2nd newest release of OS/400.  It was true back then and you still see it today. 

While no support end date set, it was withdrawn from marketing on May 27, 2011 and if history is indicative of IBM's plans, expect support to end for V5R4 sometime in late 2012.  But that doesn't mean that IBM won't offer program support extensions similar to V5R3 which you can get until April 30, 2012.  This is all speculation of course and none of that means you shouldn't be looking at new features and understanding how they can help your business.

I strongly encourage you to check out the features of IBM i 7.1 and the prices of Power Systems iron.  You get way more bang for your buck than what you used to.

Friday, June 17, 2011

New in IBM i 7.1: RPG Built-in Function %SCANRPL

%SCANRPL gives you the ability to scan a string for a value and then replace it with another value.


The article I wrote for MC Press Online describes it in more detail.

http://www.mcpressonline.com/tips-&-techniques/rpg/techtip-new-in-71-the-scanrpl-built-in-function.html