They’re flippin’ something … but it ain’t burgers
There’s delicious irony in Dan Burger of IT Jungle breaking the story that finally lays to rest the ghost of IBM’s ill-judged campaign: “Sure there will be other jobs for programmers who don’t know Java.”
Dan tells the story of long-time IBM AS/400 shop the Harry Fox Agency (HFA), where a couple of IT managers decided their "RPG resources were far too great to squander." This story was refreshing because I invariably read articles and discussion threads that couch the future of RPG developers and the IBM i platform in simplistic black or white terms that belie the real issues and options.
Continue reading “They’re flippin’ something … but it ain’t burgers” »
Technology Trends – or Business Requirements?
How closely does the average IT shop actually follow emerging technological trends and the advice of leading industry analysts and the media in planning their budgets and projects? When Gartner says they predict large organizations will establish "cloudsourcing" teams or that future applications will be integrated with social technologies or that organizations will need to provide applications to interact with customers via mobile devices, does this impact your planning?
If you follow the industry analysts, in particular Gartner, you will be accustomed to seeing predictions about the future of Information Technology — software, applications and infrastructure — often numerically identified Letterman-style as a "Top Ten" list. I recently referenced Gartner's Top Strategic Technology list for 2011 in my blog post "Reaching for the Sky - Cloud Computing." Afterwards, I pulled the lists for the past three years to see how these trends have changed or evolved. Continue reading “Technology Trends – or Business Requirements?” »
Sweeten your Customer Relationships with SugarCRM on IBM i
While technology improvements have lowered the cost of building and deploying business solutions, until recently, the software and implementation cost of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems was unaffordable for most small to medium businesses who rely on their IBM i for their line of business applications. CRM is a strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service and technical support (Source: Wikipedia).
A CRM system should provide at least basic information about the companies or organizations (accounts) and the people you work with at those companies (contacts). Accounts can be your customers (or leads), but they may also be your suppliers, your partners, or your subcontractors. While highly extensible and customizable, a CRM cannot be everything to any and all businesses. It also has its limitations, and not acknowledging them upfront often leads to frustration or poor user adoption rates. In turn, this usually translates to a business never fully realizing the benefits of a CRM system. Continue reading “Sweeten your Customer Relationships with SugarCRM on IBM i” »
Top 10 Checklist for Evaluating Modernization Tools
Guest Blogger: Paul Conte, President PCES, is a leading Application Development Strategist.
“Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.” – Winston Churchill, February 9, 1941
While application modernization isn’t as daunting as the challenges Churchill faced during World War II, application developers and IT managers may feel his words perfectly express their sentiments as they face a mountain of “legacy” code that needs updating.
Some developers may wish for the kinds of bombs and artillery Churchill wanted, so they can blow the legacy code to smithereens and start fresh without all the headaches of gnarly old code. Dropping a bomb on an enterprise’s code portfolio might be gratifying to the IT team, but it would likely destroy the enterprise along with the code.
When more sensible views prevail, development teams often start looking for the right “modernization” tools to help them finish (and, in many cases, start) the job.
To help in that search, here’s my “top 10 checklist” for finding the right tool. Continue reading “Top 10 Checklist for Evaluating Modernization Tools” »
Protect Your Customers’ PII (Personally Identifiable Information)
Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is the sensitive information that can be used to uniquely identify the flesh and blood people that are our staff, partners, vendors — and especially our customers.
Some examples include: name, birth date, address, government issued ID numbers, email, credit card, bank account, user ID and password. As technology evolves, biometric data and even DNA sequences will make the list as well!
Occurrences of leaked PII make headlines quickly and can be very damaging to organizations.
To get a sense of this, just google sony playstation security breach and you’ll be met with a flurry of customer dissatisfaction, lawsuits and real losses in revenue and market share. Fortunately for Sony, the majority of their online gamers are loyal (read addicted) and have flocked back after the network came back up a month later.
Will your customers be as forgiving should their PII be leaked? Let’s not find out …
It may be tempting to dive in and just start scrambling sensitive data, but as with any project, we need to do some planning first. Continue reading “Protect Your Customers’ PII (Personally Identifiable Information)” »