March 20, 2017
March 20, 2017 | Volume 12 Issue 4
• LEAD ARTICLE: Managed Services: A Shift in the IT Department Mindset
• FEATURED ARTICLE: Internet of Things: You Can’t Avoid the Inevitable
• NEWS HIGHLIGHT: IBM to Hire 2,000 U.S. Veterans into New Collar Technology Careers
• ON-DEMAND WEBCAST: IBM i Resources Retiring?
• FEATURED VIDEO: Why you should use Watson Natural Language Understanding
• EVENT: Open Source tools for RPG ILE
Managed Services: A Shift in the IT Department Mindset
IT departments need to be used as masters of applying technology to business rules rather than simply technology experts who happen to work for the business.
Written by Steve Pitcher
For many companies, IT has historically been an extension of the finance department because that’s where the majority of systems began. Paper processes for finance gave way to digital processes. Soon afterward, other paper processes became digitized for order management, inventory management, shipping/receiving, and so on…down to the shop floor. The last decade has been about extending businesses with the functionality that mobile devices have offered the world.
IT is always in a consistent state of change.
You love IBM i and IBM keeps rolling out new features you’d like to learn. But instead of developing new skills, are you spending time writing queries, formatting reports, and sending files to Excel users? Whether you already have a well-known BI solution or rely on IBM Query/400, you can benefit from the affordable versatility of NGS-IQ. Look for NGS at The Summit, NEUGC, & COMMON, watch a one minute overview, or request a FREE trial. www.ngsi.com. 800-824-1220
Your IBM i RPG applications are the lifeblood of your business. But their crude character-based green-screens make your RPG apps look and feel old fashioned.
ASNA Wings puts a modern Web user interface on your RPG applications quickly and easily. Wings quickly adds power and pizzazz to your IBM i RPG portfolio. Learn how in our free March 23rd, 9am CDT Webcast.
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Confused About Identity Management? Get expert help in this latest release from MC Press. Author Graham Williamson explains identity management for business people. Business managers and CIOs will learn how to manage today's identity challenges relating to access control, the cloud, consumers, data security, and the Internet of Things. If you are tasked with fitting identity management into your business strategy, then Identity Management: A Business Perspective is the perfect guide for you!
Internet of Things: You Can’t Avoid the Inevitable
This article is excerpted from Identity Management: A Business Perspective, chapter 7.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is upon us. “What does that mean?” you may ask. Well, it means you had better get ready to use your identity management environment to support access to “things.” “But we don’t do that,” you reply. “Why not?” is my response. It is highly likely that there are business processes within your organization that could benefit from the deployment of things. So when you finally get pulled into the 21st century, you will need to plan for more than just people accessing your systems.
Let’s face it: IBM i experts and RPG programmers are retiring from the workforce. These folks have been managing all areas of your business—often manually and behind the scenes—for decades, everything from IT operations to data and documents to cybersecurity.
Are you prepared to handle their departure?
During this 30-mintue recorded webinar, our panel of IBM i experts—Chuck Losinski, Robin Tatam, Richard Schoen, and Tom Huntington—will outline strategies that allow your company to cope with IBM i skills depletion by adopting these strategies that allow you to get the job done without deep expertise on the OS:
- Automate IBM i processes
- Use managed services to help fill the gaps
- Secure the system against data loss and viruses
IBM i skills depletion is a top concern for IBM i shops around the world. The strategies you discover in this webinar will help you ensure that your system of record—your IBM i—continues to deliver a powerful business advantage, even as staff retires.