IBM i

SunGard Looks for Growth with New Reseller Program

I like what SunGard brings to the table. I like the idea that they are doing well right now too.

“SunGard’s Availability Services business unit last week launched a new reseller partner program to augment its direct-sales approach and expand its offerings to small and mid size businesses. The new program covers all of the company’s offerings–everything from traditional tape-based backup to hot site recovery and full high availability (HA) replication–and is aimed at generating referrals from resellers and “white box” versions of SunGard’s services that partners can resell themselves.

SunGard has always sold its disaster recovery (DR) and HA services using a direct-sales model. Considering that a good percentage of SunGard’s customers are big, Fortune 500-size companies, it’s always made a lot of sense to develop and maintain a close relationship with this upscale clientele, instead of relying on partners to do it.”

LINK :: ITJungle - SunGard Looks for Growth with New Reseller Program

LINK :: SunGard

Open Ended Question - What are you going to do?

The owners of this site hate it when I put up open ended questions hoping for some feedback. And to make them happy I am going to keep doing it. It’s just that I hope to get some answers and I do from time to time.

1. How large an IBM i do you have now?
2. Does your company or customer seem happy with the IBM i System?
3. How many IBM i Systems do you have now?
4. How many partitions?
5. Do you run LInux on the POWER Platform?
6. Do you run AiX on the POWER Platform?
7. Do you run Windows on your POWER Platform?
8. Are there plans to move away from the IBM i?
9. If you are moving away from the IBM i what platform are you moving too?
10. When your current lease is up do you plan on getting a new IBM i?

I know these are the kinds of questions IBM is looking at, but in order to keep the blog freash along with my writting it essential to know where the IBM i is going and what you use it for. You don’t have to tell anyone where you work or what you use it for.

I spoke to soon, IBM is discounting…

I just posted that IBM is not doing anything, and I have to take some of that back now. According to THE FOUR HUNDRED they are offering iLoyalty Blitz for all current IBM i owners.

LINK :: IT Jungle - THE FOUR HUNDRED - IBM and Resellers Do the iLoyalty Blitz

“The basic idea, according to the internal documents that I have been able to get my hands on concerning the iLoyalty Blitz, is to get customers interested in new Power Systems i machinery with “as few touches as possible” and the hopes of closing a sale in only two phone calls. The first call to the customer is a value call, to discuss the benefits of moving to the new technology and sharing some examples of how moving to a new Power Systems i box can cost no more or even less than supporting a vintage OS/400 machine. That first call is to get some detailed information so the salesperson can do a tailored pitch in the second call and then toss in these two deals mentioned above and any other applicable discounts, rebates, and promotions, as well as low-rate or deferred-payment financing for the system from IBM Global Finance.” - Timothy Prickett Morgan

COMMON giving back - 5K Race/Walk & Blood Drive

You will not catch me at the blood drive. I have a fear of needles and blood and while I am typing this I am breaking out in a cold sweat. I know it’s ok to see blood and needles are just medicines great technological advances, but I must have been a CIVIL WAR solider reincarnate who had one of those half in needles and lost a limb, because I hate them all.

On the other side, I am also not a runner, but I would like to try to run all 5K of it. I am getting in shape and would love to see a good turn out for the event. So sign up now and race me to the end. I am planning on winning it. Wouldn’t that be grand, 5′11′ stout man from NC wins 5K technology race…I can smell the gatorade already!

LINK :: COMMON Cares - 5K Run/Walk and Blood Drive

Public Service :: COMMON is coming to RENO

Are you going to be in RENO? I am!

COMMON is having it’s convenetion in RENO and you need to be there. If you are an IBM i or an AIX person looking for POWER solutions, please come to the COMMON Annual Meeting in RENO, NV this year. We would love to have you.

LINK :: COMMON in RENO

January 2009 - Wrap up and Thoughts

Well January 2009 is over. Time is flying and the economy is not getting much better is it? It’s getting harder to work harder when you are seeing people loose their jobs. I hate it when the economy goes to the crapper. I don’t like it one bit, and the media, in my opinion, is not helping. They are not reporting anything but news that would make a normal well mannered person want to go jump off a bridge. I am not suggesting you do that but why can’t the media report something other than bad bad bad all the time.

We have a running joke in our house when the news is on, you can almost her them saying, if you watch this news your family could die, and we all just laugh. The truth is the media never wants to report the fuzzy, happy, stories. I think it kills them.  I would like to see one day a week when the media does not make me want to turn the news off with all the bad news and do some good news.

I am also tired of companies keeping on CEOs that make millions and all this while the company is tanking and they get to lay off  5000 people. Hey CEO person, cut you and your EXECS salary down to 100K a year and then start cutting jobs. The way I see it we can either fire one $5 million a year EXEC or 300 people. Hummm. I will keep the 300 people who work hard and really need the money and let the one do nothing exec. figure it out. I get tired of hearing about bonuses too from companies that were telling us they needed a hand out 6 months ago and passed out money to retain executives. You have to be kidding me?

I hope the economy comes back soon and I hope all the people I know who don’t have work find some. How can we solve this economic problem. We can spend a little. I really don’t think it’s as bad as the government says it is either. We were out tonight trying to find a place to eat and every place was packed. The shops were packed and the mall was busy. Nothing but big companies seem to be doing bad who miss managed money and kept on to many high payed execs.

I also can’t wait to be in RENO and here what fancy story IBM has worked up as to why the IBM i and POWER Systems sales numbers are all off. Who will they blame? I am sure no System i’ and iSeries servers are coming off lease in 2009, they all somehow came off last year and none of them are going to be delivered this year?  While IBM lays off people they still fail to know how to sell some of the best hardware in the business. Funny DELL and HP are figuring it out and they are putting Windows onto their server and they still sell? What is the IBM i missing that it can’t seem to fly of the shelves at IBM? Sales staff? NO! Price? Maybe? Commitment from IBM? Maybe? A one sentence tag line? YES? How about CIOs and IT Managers who undrstand it and can order it today and get it next week? YES, we need that.

Why can’t I order an IBM i from IBM today and get it by next Friday? WHY?

You don’t have to answer I know it already and plan to ask it in RENO!

David Vasta - Linux for IBM i: Introducing Linux to IBM i people-PART 1

The IBM i is a great platform. Not many of you out there will argue that point. It’s solid, robust and very powerful. Part of that power is just that power or the hardware that we now call Power. The operating system (OS) is nothing unless it has rock-solid hardware to run on. So part of the IBM i’s stability is the hardware. Another fine example of a powerful OS that runs on Power is AIX. The problem is that not everything needs an IBM i or an AIX partition. Sometimes, you just need a file and print server or maybe a DNS or mail router. Of course you could do this all on Windows, but that gets really expensive and it does not run on Power. So, what do you do? Linux on Power: It’s easy, cheap and very powerful, much like its AIX cousin.

The next hurdle is the OS and how it works. If you have never seen Unix or Linux, your first few weeks can be painful. So lets take this one step at a time and talk about Linux, you the Administrator and what to do with your new best friend.

LINK :: Linux for IBM i: Introducing Linux to IBM i people

Biased CIOs spend more money and don’t solve problems, they create them

What happens when an IBM AS/400, iSeries, System i, i5/OS, POWER System, Lotus Domino/Notes) IT shop doing fine, keeping the company running and is stable, has happy employees, happy users and then out of no where a new CIO or IT Manager is hired who:

1. Does not understand IBMs offering from both the IBM Systems side and the Lotus side?
2. Is biased towards another major technology company for no other reason or with out any logic or facts.

Bias is defined as; a particular tendency or inclination, esp. one that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question; prejudice.

Now that we have established what bias is we can move on with the problem.

So there you are a loyal and hard working IBM i Admin, you and the Lotus Admin work hard to keep the company running. The companies main application for work is housed on the IBM i and everyone uses mail that comes out of Lotus Notes, plus Lotus has a feature no other application server has out there, rapid visual development, and there is always the one Lotus Developer, building applications for end users so they they can store information, access different types of data and make use of the Lotus and IBM i applications, and extend them to the company.

Everything is humming along, working well. Cost are in check, and with even more consolidation to the IBM i you could save more money.

The one summers day, or any season for that matter, a new CIO or IT Manager is hired into your company. Right after he says hello to everyone, his next comment is “We are going to replace all that IBM technology with Microsoft (or SUN).”

Continued »

What “i” want in 2009

Over the years the “i” people have wanted  for many things. The want list is long and heavy every year with the same things, and every year like a fat person on a diet for the first two days of the year, it falls apart the first time you drive by Krispy Kreame and the “HOT” light is on. Every year at COMMON we get what we want and hear what we need to hear and then NOTHING happens.

We never get what we wanted, to be slimmer, more wildly accepted and everyone’s best friend. Now I am not saying overweight people can’t have friends, but what I am saying is every year we ask for IBM to do something special this year with the IBM i (or AS/400, iSeries, System i, & i5/OS) and make it a stand out year with everyone wanting to join IBM i’s Facebook page, but I think in 2010 we will be asking again for the same things all over again just like that diet.

IBM needs to evaluate the entire marketing team behind POWER systems. I am anti-losing your job, but when you are not doing your job, you need to lose it. IBM also needs to re-think every stuck up know it all executive that is holding back anything that could potentially sell the IBM i. I know I am asking for drastic measure, but for over 20 years the IBM i has been suffering and not because of people like me who love the system, because IBM fails to do anything right by the system. We need a guerrilla marketing campaign, and not two months of yo-yo marketing and the dry spell for the reast of the year.

IBM need to take a page out of a few other companies play books and figure out for once how to market the most stable, easy to administer and flexible system on the market today, and I am not talking about convoluted Linux or UNIX, I am talking about the IBM i. It’s just too damn simple and to powerful to ignore.

The next thing that needs to happen is every CIO and Director of IT that has every dismissed the IBM i for being junk or not UNIX like needs to be sent home and without any money. They are all in fact morons and have no idea what a powerful and consolidate-able server they are trying to remove from their IT shop. If you have file servers and they are on Windows, you are wasting your money. If you have print servers and they are on Windows you are wasting your money. If you have Database servers and they are on anything but the IBM i, you guessed it, you are wasting your money. If you have Websphere Servers and they are on anything but the IBM i, you are wasting your money. If you have Web Servers with PHP and HTML, and they are not on the IBM i, you are again wasting your money. If you have web applications that need LAMP, and they are not on the IBM i, you are, yes I am going to say it, wasting your money. If you run Domino on anything but IBM i you are wasting your money. Are you getting the picture? Once large IBM i system can do all this and integrate it all with each other and has Single Sign-on for all systems.

More “C” level morons every day keep buying Windows, and Linux and all kinds of systems to confuse and grow IT. You grow it to a point where no one can mange it and most companies hate having big IT departments anyway. What if you have a data center with ONE, yes ONE IBM i Server? That would be so smart and long term would save you loads, I mean loads of cash. Who in this economy can throw away money? Is your CIO or Director of IT wasting money with many Windows OSes when he could only need one OS license? How many virus prone, unstable Windows Servers do you own vs. the one IBM i server that has a very strong security system with no way a virus could infect it? How much do you spend on Anti-virus software for all those severs?

Most medeium to large comapnies haveover 30 Windows Servers doing lord knows what. Sometimes you have to have Windows servers, but my guess would be you really don’t need them if you didn’t want them. Everyone of the Windows servers needs to be managed by another server and they need Anti-virus licensese. Now your talking even more expense, and every so often Microsoft releases a new version which is included with the support cost on the IBM i and is not for the Windows, so there you go needing to buy 30 new Windows licenses to upgrade. This is getting expensive.

Then you have to have a server to manage those servers, and fail over servers. Be fore you know it you have entirly to many servers from one MCSE to handle and you then have to hire ore people and those new people all want to buiold more server, so then you have 40 and then 50 servers and your costs are now out of contol. In IBM i land you have one server that can grow as needed and one ail over server that can grow as well. One OS, and no servers to manage your server to manage your applications.  IBM can provide you an IBM Hot spare for a fraction of the cost and you don’t have to pay for another complete license for the OS, all you do is pay for what you own.

Lastly, why can’t IBM get this kind of detailed hard hitting information in front of CIOs, not because is all made of or a lie, but because it’s the truth and would end up making them look like fools, and who wants to invite in a sales person who is going to point out the last five years of the CIOs time at some company he was doing nothing but make bad, uneducated, crappy decisions that are costing them hundreds of thousands of IT dollars, in some cases millions.  It takes a big man to admit they made all the wrong moves, wasted millions and need to be fired for fraud, waste, and abuse.

IBM, you need to stop playing Mr. Nice Company. Stop sugar coating your offerings, lower the price and play hard ball with the IT world. If today you sell 500 IBM i 515 Series boxes and you lowered the cost a bit so that you sold oh, 2000 that would in fact be better, becasue long term those shops would see the value of the IBM i and might invest more into larger boxes to consolidate more servers. I am sure someone at IBM has said that, then all the top level smarty pants point out he is wrong and sent him packing. Well smarty pants executive, you are wrong and he was right!

IBM you also need to learn who the bloggers are and when something new comes out you need to send them information, let them hard test the hardware of software and get them to do your bidding. I have been asking IBM for years to send me a 515 or anything to review and IBM being the stuck up fortress they are can’t seem to see the benifit of me or System i News from taking a new thingie, testing it and talking about it. FREE marketing, but yet they fail to see that, so in 2009 please send me some hardware to review. Send me something to review. Hell just call me and tell me NO, but all I every get from IBM is “no comment” and “NO, we dont do that”….

What about the SMART CUBE, would that not be a great place to start. Send out some Demos to the IBM i bloggers out there and let them talk it up. Unfortunantly IBM does not see the value in this tryp of marketing. Word of mouth marketing is I guess “crap” to them. I am also trying to get the Lotus group to send me a Ltus Foundtation server for me to demo and maybe present  session at COMMON about it, but he talks have been slow and  am still waiting to hear back from them. I think I have a better chance of getting a Lotus Foundations thanks to the free thinking Lotus people.

Now I am no fan of SUN, and I think they have blown it big time and are down on their Solaris luck right now. The all know Jonathan Schwarts, who I think is a hard pill to swallow most days, in 2006 offered up a FREE Sun Server to anyone who would write up a review. I am not asking to for IBM to do the same, but at least putnew product in the hands of the people who an talk it up.You can even take it back after a period of time, but there proof your marketing is failing you and proof that bloggers are the furture of community and people marketing.

You also don’t sell as many small IBM i servers as you would like, but that never stops you from being a crappy marking company either? Send me a demo and I will tell the world what they are missing. It’s hard for me to sit here all day telling every how great the server is and I have nothing to back it up. Bloggers need to review products, show they touched it and it’s awesome. Blogging is not something I do to make sure all my BFFs all know what I had for lunch. We are doign this to better the community, to answer question, make the hard press when something stinks and shout when something rocks! People listen to what we have to say too, and we need IBMs support to make it happen as well. Thel Lotus Bloggers has huge IBM support while the IBM i and POWER bloggers stuggle and claw in hopes to build up a comminuty of IBM i and POWER based bloggers talking about new and exciting stuff.

I could have been nice about this and not beat up IBM, and I am sure they could care less how I approch his subject. I love IBM, I think Lotus and IBMs products are far more market ready then anyone else in the same space. I love the POWER hardware, and I can’t get enough Lotus 8. All of these things rock, but IT Manager and CIOs are not getting it. I know those people read what I have to say and they have admins and developers who read these blogs and they go back and share. If I was to review a 515 I am sure someone would say, we need that for a project I am working on and buy one, maybe two. I reviewed, a while ago, a new System i 570 and our fail over system, I think it was a 550. I still get email to this day asking about that review and what I would recommend or how we did HA? IBM are you getting this. I can do things with this blog you only dream about? The crazy part is I pulled it sometime ago becasue the company that owned the server asked me to. It’s archived somewhere and people find it and email me questions. What would they do with a real post about a new 515, Smart Cube or Lotus Foundtation Server?

In 2009 I want the IBM i to get traction, I want to review POWER based systems, and I want Lotus Products to out sell the competitor. It’s all possible and I am willing to help, are you IBM willing to make it happen?

Send me your POWER Systems, your blades, and your smart cubes and I will review them all. Be fair and help you increase sales.

Running Domino on the IBM i - Please update

Dear IBM,

Please update this page for 2009. (LINK TO PAGE:: IBM i Benchmarks) If you plan on making sales of hardware and software you need to keep your stats current. This web page you provide was relevant in 2003, but is not some 5 years later now that we are on Domino version 8.0.2, and 8.5 is right around the corner.

That is all,
David Vasta