Winning Customers with Modernization & IBM i – Modernization Part 4

While I was on my trip to Australia and New Zealand to participate in conferences and to speak with IBM i customers and partners, I ran across two more stories dealing with modernization and IBM i. Well, OK, I ran into more than two stories, but these highlight an important reason to modernize: Winning Customers.

The first story is about an application called Moorepayhr, which evolved from a traditional RPG application. The company behind this application is now called NGA Human Resources. You might have read about them recently in an article in IT Jungle written by Dan Burger. I highly recommend you read through it, because the story of this application is quite interesting. Moorepayhr comes from the Preceda On Demand solution Dan mentions.

For the purposes of this blog, the key point is this: the new, modern, Software as a Service application was successful in bringing new clients – to NGA, and to IBM i. How successful? NGA brought 1,000 new clients to IBM i, in the first year of Moorepayhr! Their solution competes with on-premise solutions, and with other solutions in the cloud/SaaS world, and they won 1,000 new clients with their modern approach, which still has RPG as its core business processing language.

The second story for this blog comes from a tweet I saw from partner looksoftware. They worked with Paragon Consulting Services, which owns a solution called Metalware, which is used in the metals industry. Did you know there are applications for the “metals industry?” That’s one of the great things about this platform – you seem to be able to find applications specific to almost any industry! Well, Metalcraft is one of those solutions, but it was challenged by the perception of its application as being out of date because of the interface it used.

Working with looksoftware, Paragon gave Metalware a new look, and the results were dramatic. According to their case study “As soon as we started showing this to our prospective customers, we had immediate results. Our customer growth increased by 100%,” said Shawne O’Connor, Director at Paragon. 100%! That’s a business result. And again, because their solution runs on Power Systems and IBM i, they are bringing new clients to the platform.

Our marketplace has always been driven by solutions. “Application System” is still at the heart of what the IBM i platform is. When our application vendors take advantage of the new capabilities IBM i provides, when they provide powerful modern solutions with the kinds of interfaces clients want, delivered on a system in the customer shop, or over the Internet in a SaaS or Cloud solution, they continue to win, and the platform gains new users.

 

 

 

Kawasaki Motors Manufacturing, Mobile and IBM i – Modernization Part 2

 

Last week I started a blog series on modernization with a look at how Corvette America used PHP to use new technology to add value to their business. This week, we have another name in the vehicle industry, this time from the manufacturing segment: Kawasaki Motors Manufacturing Corp. (KMM) in Lincoln, Nebraska.

KMM manufactures All-Terrain Vehicles (ATV), Personal Watercrafts (Jet Ski®), Utility Vehicles (Mule™), Recreational Utility Vehicles (RUV - Teryx™) and wheels for ATVs and utility vehicles. These products are shipped throughout North America and exported to Japan, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and other locations around the world. They have been a user of the i platform for a long time and had a small staff of developers who were already very familiar with the business. KMM wanted to take advantage of this knowledge, as well as the software they had been investing in for years, but they were also convinced that using mobile technology to modernize their manufacturing operations would lower their costs and streamline their processes.

An aside before we get to their results and the technology Kawasaki used to achieve them: There are many paths to modernization, and there are many ways in which I become aware of customers and partners accomplishing modernization goals. In the case of KMM, I first heard about their project when we were preparing for last year’s COMMON conference.

COMMON gives annual Innovation Awards to IBM i users who show how the platform can be used to innovate. This past year, I was asked to join the team of people making the final determination of the winner. Kawasaki had one of two entries I saw in detail, and they ended up winning the award. It’s really interesting to read through submissions of this nature, because the award focuses not only on innovation, but also on business value. And in the case of Kawasaki, the business value was clear – and impressive.

Before the modernization process, the KMM manufacturing process had something called “kanban cards” – physical cards that needed to be used to track parts. By using mobile devices connected to their IBM i Power Systems server, and using the LongRange technology from LANSA, Kawasaki was able to eliminate the need for handling these cards, and this resulted in nearly $1 million in annual cost reductions (the numbers in the case study add to $949,500 to be precise.) Kawasaki estimates they recouped their investment – the costs of doing the modernization project – within six months of implementation! Now that is business value!

If you want a deeper understanding of what they did, take a look at the article IBM Systems Magazine wrote, or watch the reference video KMM did for LANSA.

For purposes of this blog, I want to use this example in the same way I used the last one, and the way I’ll use the next one – to point out the power and possibilities of retaining the value that already exists in your IBM i platform, and the impressive results you can get from applying new technology to it.

You might use Zend’s PHP support, which ships with every IBM i installation; you might go to a company like LANSA and use their tools to enhance your current IBM i applications; you might engage a partner like Profound Logic (which we’ll examine next time) who are experts in using the RPG Open Access capabilities IBM makes available in the compiler. In fact, there are several partners who specialize in these sorts of modernization projects. The ISV Advisory Council has the vendors I’ve already mentioned, plus looksoftware, BCD, Krengel Technology, GXS – and probably more (sorry for any I missed!) – which have a significant focus on modernizing your existing solutions, and there are more vendors around the world.

In fact, this is a theme among most of the ISVs who have solutions on IBM i today: whether they offer a specific industry solution or a generic ERP package, they are modernizing to provide additional value. It’s what software companies do to compete and to grow.

If you want to continue getting value from the tried-and-true assets you already have – solution and operating system – but you want to add even more value with the latest technology such as mobile devices, you have plenty of options on IBM i.

 

 

Strategy Updates in IBM i Development

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to work as a member of the development team for IBM i? What would you do to prepare yourself to make decisions about what parts of the operating system need more investment? How would you learn about the changing technologies and then evaluate new ideas against ideas that have already begun to be implemented? Today, I want to help you understand what my team and I will be doing over the next several weeks to do exactly that. Much of what we discuss is IBM Confidential, of course, so I can’t share it in this blog. But I thought I would give you a peek at how we go about preparing for the difficult process of saying “yes” to many good ideas, while have to say “no” – or at least “not yet” to others.

With the summer comes the beginning of our planning cycle for 2013. During our planning process we look at each of the ideas for new development on IBM i and the related products, as well as future deliveries from Power Systems, PowerVM, Systems Director and so on. By the time the plan process is done, we will have decided to continue most of the work we’ve already started, but we will have decided to modify some of it, stop some completely, and begin new projects.

In preparation for “the plan,” our development team takes a look at each technology area and assesses whether there is enough new information for an update to that area’s strategy on IBM i. A series of strategy sessions is held with the technology experts from the labs presenting that new information, along with their recommendations for changes to our plans, to a small group of Business Architects. We listen to each of these presentations with our minds focusing on interactions of various technical elements, trying to weigh the relative priorities of the changes since the prior year.

Let me give you some examples. One of the first presentations we will hear will be from Jenny Dervin, the lead architect on our PowerHA product. She and her team have made some key deliveries since 7.1 – with the support for V7000 and SVC as part of TR3, for example – and they are actively working on some very important new function for the next major release of IBM i and PowerHA. She will be delivering her presentation during the same session as the owner of another technology area, because we see a good possibility for these two technologies to work together on new High Availability function in the near future.

Soon after that presentation, another will take place with the needs of our ISVs as the focal point. The lead developers who work with our largest ISVs will talk to us about requests those ISVs have, as well as anything else they think IBM i could deliver which would help those largest ISVs compete more effectively on IBM i than they do, for example, on x86 platforms. Also presenting at that meeting will be Kent Milligan, who runs our ISV Advisory Council. He will help us examine the feedback we’ve received from that council, which represents a much wider group of ISVs. With those two presentations taking place at the same time, we hope to see commonalities that will make it easier to create a plan that has all of our ISV needs properly prioritized.

One of the most complicated strategy sessions will have a combination of Cloud-related offerings, PowerVM Virtualization, Storage and SAN. These have some natural overlap, and yet there are also some distinct needs within each area. Getting a high-level view of the overall interaction of them all, while still addressing the key directions of each, will be a good technical challenge, but with the team we have in place, I’m sure we will learn a great deal.

These are just a few examples of the topics we will be examining before our planning cycle starts in earnest. In the past, I’ve tweeted some of the topics we were considering, so if you follow @Steve_Will_IBMi on Twitter, you might catch me announcing the topics as they happen. Feel free to follow along. As you go through the next few weeks at your job, you can picture what the team of IBM i architects, designers and developers will be thinking about as we consider the long-term needs of this platform.

 

Twitter: #ibmi, #powersystems #powerha #powervm @Steve_Will_IBMi

 

Solution Editions for IBM i - JD Edwards & Turner Industries Group

Back in the late 1970s, IBM was producing systems the S/36 and S/38 for businesses that needed reliable computing. The success of those IBM systems, and their descendents, was closely tied to solutions produced by Independent Software Vendors.

In recognition of the key role ISV solutions play in our marketplace, and to help customers realize near-term value from purchasing IBM i and those solutions together, Solution Editions were created in 2010. By purchasing a Solution Edition, a customer can get the latest POWER, IBM i and ISV solution at a reduced price, and be assured that the level of stability they expect from the combined platform will provide excellent total cost of ownership. When Solution Editions were created, IBM naturally went to some of our most successful ISVs – first to define the concept, and then to create offerings.

The JD Edwards solution suite has a long history on IBM i. It came into existence at the very time those first midrange systems were introduced, and the partnership has been strong ever since. Yes, the relationship has undergone change – JD Edwards was acquired by PeopleSoft, which was then acquired by Oracle – but the support of the common customers continues, and new capabilities continue to be added for those customers. So it was natural that this would be one of the worldwide Solution Editions.

We have many excellent customer references from joint JD Edwards + IBM i installations, so today I wanted to highlight one of them – Turner Industries Group.

According to its website “Turner Industries has provided a single vendor solution in heavy industrial construction, maintenance, pipe, module and vessel fabrication, equipment, rigging and heavy hauling, and associated specialty services for nearly 50 years.” Yes, like so many IBM i customers, they have a real business to run, and they just need a server and software to help them run it.

Turner Industries had these challenges:

• Support the company’s projected growth
• Deliver increased performance and reliability
• Reduce maintenance costs and hardware footprint
• Facilitate new application development and reporting

Its business partner, CMA Technology Solutions, worked to deliver this solution:

• IBM Power 740 Solution Edition with IBM i and Oracle JD Edwards World
• Solid State Disks
• Capacity Backup
• Rational Development Tools
• IBM DB2 WebQuery

The new solution reduced server footprint by 66 percent, reduced energy consumption and reduced maintenance costs – a clear answer to the challenges the customer listed. But it got much more than that, due to the advanced capabilities in IBM i, the Oracle JD Edwards solution, and the other IBM technologies it purchased.

Turner was able to centralize all backup, upgrades, operations and maintenance, improving its high availability and disaster recovery position. It did this while getting special prices associated with the Solution Edition, which reduced its initial solution cost over the alternative, as well as reducing its ongoing maintenance costs.

Tuner didn’t stop there, either. The company also invested in SSD technology, which reduced the runtime of most batch jobs by 50 percent. Additional work was done to modernize some older queries to SQL, reducing their runtime from 20-30 minutes to one second! And now it can take excellent advantage of the easy-to-use DB2 WebQuery product alongside World to help run its business as it grow.

This is one example of many among the customers IBM i and JD Edwards serve together. And this solution is just one of many that are part of the Solution Editions program around the world.

In future blogs, I will almost certainly highlight other Solution Editions. They are excellent examples of the vitality of the IBM i, Power Systems, and the Business Partner and ISV marketplace, and they demonstrate the commitment we all have to bringing the latest technology to our clients to help them compete effectively.

 

 

 

Twitter: #ibmi, #powersystems @Steve_Will_IBMi

 

Live Partition Mobility, TR4 and more - IBM i 7.1

Today is announce day for several items that might be of interest to many of you, and one thing that will certainly affect almost all of you at some point.

Today, IBM is announcing the content of Technology Refresh 4 for IBM i 7.1. (That’s the “one thing.” You’ll all be on 7.1 soon, right? And when you are, you will want the latest TR, so you’ll get TR4.)

Many clients have been waiting for this announcement, anticipating the delivery of one major function enabled by TR4; the one known as “Live Partition Mobility” (LPM).

I actually referred to this function obliquely back in October. I included a roadmap for function that was required in IBM i so that it can be used to provide a PowerVM-based cloud. In October, there was one final step to be completed. It is now complete.

For those of you who might be a little unclear about the concept of Live Partition Mobility, it is simply this: You have a partition running on system A; you tell it to move to system B; it moves – while it's still running! It might take a minute, and often only a few seconds, to move from A to B, but it will move, and there will be no disruption in the running workloads. A few seconds pause to users who are interacting with it, but nothing more. IBM i and PowerVM just pause the work taking place on one system, move it to another, and start it up again.

Customers will use this function in many ways. They can balance work among servers to get the most efficient use of their resources. Or perhaps they need to take one machine down for maintenance – they can move the workload that's running on it to another system for a while, then move it back when the system is ready to go again. And very importantly, clients who want to implement clouds of Power Systems in their organizations will be able to do so, with IBM i participating fully in those clouds.

This is all made possible when you use the Virtual I/O Server to host the I/O for your IBM i partition. There are other technical requirements - POWER7, 7.1 TR4 or beyond, and more, you can find details here www.ibm.com/developerworks/ibmi/techupdates/hw/ilpm. 

Oh, and if you are an ISV, and would like to test your solution in an environment with LPM, the IBM Innovation Centers are available for you.

Still, while the most anticipated feature of the announcement might be LPM, there is much more in the announcement. Java 7 is now available on IBM i 7.1. This has actually been available for a while now, but today’s announcement highlights it, so if you want to ensure you have the PTFs which enable Java 7, go to the developerWorks page for “Java on IBM i” and click either the “News” link or the PTF Groups link. There are also several key DB2 enhancements, as well as a Technology Preview of a new member of the IBM i Access products, which removes the dependence on preinstalled code.

This brings me to a couple of other points I want to mention today.

First, I need to re-emphasize how important it is for the IBM i community to make use of developerWorks (dW) on a regular basis. It is on these dW pages we put details about the newest enhancements and how to get them. You can start at the dW IBM i home page -- https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ibmi/ -- and browse for great information. Or you can go to specific pages, such as the Java pages linked above, and subscribe to them so that you get an e-mail each time they are updated.

Second, I want to make sure you understand that some of the enhancements announced at the same time as a Technology Refresh are not actually delivered as part of the TR PTF Group. This is the case with Java, and it’s the case with all of the DB2 enhancements as well. Technology Refreshes, at their most accurate and basic level, are only used to provide function entirely below the Machine Interface, and almost always implement changes in Virtualization (such as LPM), I/O (such as new DASD options) or Processor/Firmware capabilities. When the first TR was shipped, my guest bloggers described TRs in detail, so you might want to re-read the TR Introduction blog. Perhaps even better, the main IBM i Technology Refresh page is very helpful. And if you want to see the content of each of the TRs that have been announced, there is a dW page that links you to that information.

This entry is getting a bit long, so let me give you some pointers to other important places with information about things announced today:

• Dawn May’s “i Can” blog talks about the details of implementing LPM. http://ibmsystemsmag.blogs.com/i_can/2012/04/move-my-i.html 
• The DB2 for i enhancements are too numerous to enumerate, but include XMLTABLE support and extensions to three-part name support. Suffice it to say that there should be something of interest to all you database fans out there. Go here for the scoop: www.ibm.com/developerworks/ibmi/techupdates/db2
• Speaking of DB2, Mike Cain writes a blog called “DB2 for i” and his blog will have some interesting tidbits about today’s announced function, too. http://db2fori.blogspot.com/
• IBM Software Group support for pricing based on Workload Groups is part of today’s IBM i announcement, but I described it back in February.
• A new product is available from Rational, called the Application Management Toolset for i (AMTS), which contains limited versions of two of the most basic tools – PDM and SEU. The description of this new product is in the Rational Announcement letters. I’ll try to post a link in the comments section when I get it.
• Finally, for those of you who are implementing Linux in your environments, IBM Power Linux has a big announcement today, and you will definitely want to check it out before deciding to buy any other hardware platform for Linux workloads. (Again, look in the comments section. If someone finds the link before I do, feel free to post it! I’ll be on webcasts and planes quite a bit over the next couple of days.)

All told, today’s announcements include significant enhancements to your IBM i installations. I hope you will be able to take the time to read about the new ways we are delivering value on this integrated operating environment on Power Systems.

 

 

Twitter: #ibmi, @Steve_Will_IBMi