A few years ago, Salesforce.com came out with a product called AppExchange that allowed independent software vendors to host their applications on Salesforce.com for customers to use. It’s the software as a service (SaaS) approach that there is a lot of talk — and some think a lot of hype — around.

I mention this because Magic Software, a System i vendor that develops products around helping IT run in sync with business goals. Last week, the company announced that one of its signature products, iBOLT, would be offered on Salesforce.com.

Of course this leads me to wonder about whether there are a lot of System i companies out there that are Salesforce.com customers, and in particular if they use Salesforce.com for SaaS purposes.

I looked around and noticed that J.D. Edwards, one of the biggest System i ISVs, is also part of the site, and that Salesforce.com is definitely pitching the idea of being able to do SaaS of any kind of so-called “legacy” systems through them.

We asked a few of our experts what experience they may have had running SaaS products on i, and a few responded that they didn’t have experience. So generally speaking, we can safely assume that this is still pretty new. However, Jim Mason of ebt-now shared that he has worked with customers on Salesforce.com using standard ETL tools Informatica and Data Stage which essentially do the same thing that iBolt does.

When asked about any concerns about user friendliness and security when using a product like iBolt, Mason responded,

“If you are trying to do the replication real-time, experience has shown high variances in actual performance often over the Web and proprietary networks. Properly done, security shouldn’t be an issue. Like many good ETL tools, iBolt appears to minimize programming by using visual editors to create the data maps between the data source and the data target.”

He also elaborated that the advantage and attractiveness of a product such as iBolt includes the decreased technical skill requirements to operate the program compared to locally-installed programs. However, he also noted that “debugging connection or performance problems to an SaaS application can be challenging, even for the vendors.”

With the growth in popularity of cloud computing, Mason thinks that SaaS products have a growing role to play. In fact, he’s banking on it. His company is rolling out SaaS web solutions for small businesses in the coming year that will focus on online Web collaboration without programming, simple Web stores with simple data transfers for item catalog and sales data, online web meetings and collaboration tools, and online Web databases and applications that can be synchronized with local databases using export/import in batch mode.

Magic has some customer testimonials, but I’m curious if there’s anyone else out there who is using Salesforce.com, and in what capacity. And if not, why not.

Associate Editor Leah Rosin contributed much of this report.

In 2007, the Common Europe “Top Concerns” survey found that people in the AS/400 user community were most concerned about high availability and disaster recovery. Common shared the results with IBM, and received this response from Mark Shearer, Vice President Marketing and Offerings, IBM Business Systems Group:

“Thank you very much for sharing the results of the Top Concerns Survey. It’s very helpful to have the collective views and priorities from the COMMON Europe members. I’ve forwarded this information to my executive team to factor in to our overall product and business plans as appropriate.”

This year, in addition to the “on the spot” survey conducted during the opening session of Common Europe Congress, all AS400 users are invited to share their thoughts via a web survey on the challenges they will be facing in the coming years. An iPod nano will be sent to a web winner each from North America, Europe and Australasia along with three other prizes awarded for survey respondents at the conference.

We know you have opinions, so share them now — the survey closes May 9, 2008.

I received a few emails last week in the editor@search400.com inbox concerning jobs. One was an inquiry looking to post a job to a “job board” or similar feature on our web site (we do not have such a feature, and instead partner with Monster and Dice). Another was from an iSeries worker who was currently between jobs in Atlanta, GA., looking for a new position. At the end of the week, I received an email from another 400 head-hunter passing along a press release regarding the H1-B visa program.

I am sure we have all seen headlines regarding the H-1B visas, with lobbyists testifying at Congressional hearings about the need to expand the number of H-1B visas and thus the number of qualified workers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. One of the leading proponents of expanding the program is Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, who testified to Congress about the need for more “innovation” in the United States.

“While America’s innovation heritage is unparalleled, the evidence is mounting that we are failing to make the investments in our young people, our workers, our scientific research infrastructure, and our economy that will enable us to retain our global innovation leadership,” said Gates. “If the United States truly wants to secure its global leadership in technology innovation, we must, as a nation, commit to a strategy for innovation excellence – a set of initiatives and policies that will provide the foundation for American competitive strength in the years ahead.”

Top on his list was strengthening educational opportunities for US school children. But next was “Revamping immigration rules for highly skilled workers, so that U.S. companies can attract and retain the world’s best scientific talent.”

The press release that was forwarded from the head-hunter regarded a study by Norman Matloff, professor of computer science at University of California – Davis, who disagrees with the notion that foreign workers provide “innovation” to the United States. His recent study, H-1Bs: Still Not the Best and the Brightest, argues that foreign workers are “are people of just ordinary talent, doing ordinary work. They are not the innovators the industry lobbyists portray them to be.”

Other controversies surrounding the H-1B issue include fraud assessment of the H1-B visa program, which has been spearheaded by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). In 2007, Grassley partnered with Senator Dick Durbin (R-Ill.) on a bill to overhaul the HB-1 visa program.

This controversy has been in the news for the past year, but what does this mean to you? Are you like the reader I heard from: an IT professional who is having a hard time finding a good paying job? Or are you a recruiter having difficulty filling positions? Do you think this is just anti-immigrant hype? Please share your thoughts.

So far the feedback on renaming the operating system from i5/OS to i or IBM i has overall been mixed, although there are some detractors who have some strong opinions. This one comes directly from an IT employee from an Arizona-based general contracting company:

Changing the name of the operating system to just “i” is just another idiotic idea from IBM, probably initiated by the same stupid “marketing geniuses” that dreamt up the latest super dumb campaign starring brainless “Gil” and his young clueless “geek” buddy, whose name (thankfully) escapes me.

IBM could have at least dropped the “5″ and made it i/OS or or i-OS or OS/i or OSi or something beyond just the single letter “i.”

Are they going to now change z/OS to z??

Fictitious scenario, similar to Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First” :

1. What operating system do you run ? i.
2. I what ? Just i.
3. Just you ? No, not me - i.
4. (repeat 2 and 3 above, ad infinitum)

Who would be stupid enough to choose a non-capitalized first-person pronoun to represent absolutely anything (beyond its normal English meaning/usage) ?

Lastly, the really nice thing (not), is that until IBM either reverses this name change or until the next (inevitable) name change, everyone in the AS/400 (yes, I said it) community gets to perpetually respond to their Microsoft Outlook client spell-check feature (F7) to “Ignore” every instance of i.

Even enclosing the i inside quotation marks still “throws” a “Not in Dictionary:” error. The only viable alternative is to tell spell-checker to “Add” “i” to its dictionary, after which the spell-checker forever loses its ability to find a bona-fide yet accidental neglect to capitalize a legitimate reference to one’s self, via the pronoun I. Between the above two choices, I will begrudgingly be forced to continually inform spell-checker to “Ignore” every occurrence of an i (to refer to the OS).

Even though no other words — other than “i” — in this e-mail are misspelled, it still took me about 15 seconds to respond “Ignore” to all of the occurrences of i in this e-mail. Hopefully, IBM’s bone-head decision to call the operating system “i”, will cause it to spend many thousands of dollars when its own employees are forced to do the same.

Most disheartening is that (to my knowledge) the user-community wasn’t even queried for suggestions as to whether to change the name or, given a name change, what to call it. They could have even made a contest out of it, and given away a “blade” (or would that be an i-blade?).

Don’t take this personally, because I know it’s not your doing; however please feel free to forward it to anyone in IBM who 1) would care; and 2) would actually be instrumental in rectifying this mistake (like that could/will happen).

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

As most first days go, my first day at Search400.com was a whirlwind of activity. In the mix was my discovery of the passing of AS/400 guru Al Barsa. I perused the Common website for information on what products had been released at the recent event and came across a press release from Common. My naïveté about the meaning of this news quickly passed as I read remembrances left by friends and colleagues on www.mr400.com and other AS/400-related blogs.

Quickly realizing what Al meant to this close-knit community, I contacted the folks at Common and asked whether anyone could share thoughts about Al. Understandably, Common members’ emotions were still quite fresh, as I’m sure they are for some of you. So while this post arrives two weeks after the fact, we wanted to address Al’s passing with respect and sensitivity.

Bob Krzeczowski, a Common board of director member, shared these thoughts:

I did not know Al Barsa extremely well. Al and I spoke at conferences, and I had several conversations with him at the conference in Nashville and shared a few jokes. I first heard Al speak at a Common conference, what seems like a very long time ago, and learned a tremendous amount at every session of his that I attended. He was an excellent speaker and communicator about this system platform, for which he had so much passion. I also learned a great deal from him in conversation at social events, where I also got to know about his sense of humor and his ability to listen to what you had to say. Al could certainly do that, and was more than willing to tell you what he thought about any subject.

On Monday morning at this past conference I did a small errand for the education office – I took some additional evaluation forms down to one of Al’s sessions about midday. Imagine that – one of Al’s sessions had blown out the handout count. I stuck around and handed out the additional session evaluation forms, and when almost everyone was gone, I walked up to the front of the session room to let Al know that they had gotten distributed and left a few up front in case we had missed someone. Al was in deep conversation with a group of the session attendees but looked over at me and, with that very matter of fact voice of his, said, “I think I gave my worst presentation at Common ever, this morning.” I looked at Al, and responded pretty quickly and simply said, “Well Al, you at your worst is still pretty darn good.” I meant every word of it. Al looked me right in the eye for a moment, stopped, and just said, “Why thank you Bob Krzeczowski,” and went back to his conversation.

I was very glad I ran that little errand. Al Barsa will be missed.

Clearly, Al will be missed. But his contribution to the 400 community will not end any time soon. If you would like to help carry on his spirit and enthusiasm for educating 400 users, you can donate to the Al Barsa Memorial Scholarship.

Ken Jack, a software engineer at trucking software company TMW Systems, has created the T-shirt you see to the right. He has it on his personal CafePress website called iWhatever.

Jack reflects the anguish of many System i users — er, users running i on Power Systems — who have a hard time figuring out what to call the server platform on which they run all their business applications. In a recent story on feedback of the System i/p merger, one user told me that he spent a long time trying to convince everyone in his organization that the server and platform should be called System i and i5/OS, not AS/400, iSeries, or OS/400.

Now that IBM has renamed it again to Power Systems and just “i,” expect some folks to just say forget it and start calling it AS/400 again.

That’s how Jack feels, as is apparent by this T-shirt he’s selling. He’s been selling a similar shirt for a while now, just adding on whenever IBM decides to rename the platform again.

“It’s honestly to the point where if IBM changes the name one more time, I’m going to have to put ‘continued on other side…’ on the front of the T-shirts,” Jack wrote in an email to me. “Just last month somebody bought a shirt that stopped at ‘System i.’ I bet he’s pissed.”

What are they calling it at TMW Systems? Jack said that “everybody at our shop still calls it ‘The 400.’ ‘Power System running i’ is just too much of a mouthful.”

By the way, in addition to buying the T-shirt, you can also buy other merchandise with the logo on it: mousepad, coffee mug, baseball cap, etc.

Last year IBM and Nortel announced that it would collaborate on a Voice over IP product targeted for smaller customers — 1,000 users maximum. This would compete with 3Com’s IP telephony product on the i somewhat, although the only overlapping would be at the high-end of Nortel’s product and the low-end of 3Com’s.

Needless to say, about nine months after the initial announcement, Nortel will ship software for the IP telephony product starting Friday.

The software, called the Nortel Software Communication System (SCS) 500, runs on a Linux partition on the System i. The SCS500 provides its own Linux distribution, but it also requires that users have i5/OS V5R4 or IBM i 6.1 (i5/OS V6R1) as well. Customers can use the computer’s microphone and speakers, a headset plugged into the computer, one of four hard preconfigured hard phones provided by Nortel, or their own hard phones that have been configured to work in the IP telephony system. The system is connected to voicemail, email, instant messaging, and other computer programs, which is why IBM and Nortel are fond of calling it “unified communications.”

According to IT Jungle, licenses for the SCS500 will start at $220 each with maintenance costing $34 per user per year.

This may be the last time IBM reports System i hardware revenues on their own. Seeing as the platform is now officially merged with System p into a new Power Systems, future hardware revenue figures will probably reflect that.

It’s probably a good thing.

System i revenues dropped 21 percent compared to the year-ago period. That compares to increased or flat revenue numbers from the other platforms — System z was up 10 percent, System p up 2 percent, and System x flat. Aside from a small blip at the end of last year, hardware revenues for the System i platform have been dropping steadily for a while now. Let’s take a look at the last three years per quarter:

Compare that to System p revenues in the same period:

Are there anymore questions about why IBM decided to merge the two platforms? Aside from the benefits of having a single hardware platform on the Power processor, the merger will eliminate those ugly-looking, often double-digit revenue decreases that System i was experiencing quarter after quarter after quarter.

A recent PowerTech Group study of System i shops concludes that many companies are lagging behind when it comes to implementing proper security measures on their systems. Rich Loeber, president of iSeries security product provider Kisco Information Systems Inc., shares his thoughts on the study.

Over the years, IBM has done a good job of selling the public on the idea that the System i is “the most secure processor available today.” However, the company has not done nearly as good of a job explaining how to make the system secure. Doing that takes work, some of which is not necessarily intuitive. Someone needs to be put in charge of the security setup of the system and design an approach to security for the installation. Often, security takes a back seat to other more pressing needs for the company … until a disaster happens.

Another observation I have is that security efforts are very much focused on the network and keeping outsiders out of the system. But studies clearly reveal that nearly as many security breakdowns happen from inside sources as from outside hackers. Too often it is the insider with too much access to the system who compromises sensitive information. With the advent of convenient storage media, some that you can pass off as a fob on a key chain, the inside threat cannot be ignored.

The system is only as secure as the implementation of the security features. I5/OS may be the most secure operating system around, but if it is not used correctly, you might as well have any OS in place. I have customers who’ve purchased our network security product, SafeNet/400 and have had it in place for years without activating it to control access. They’re just logging activity, when the software has the ability to control activity and prevent unauthorized access attempts. When I hear of one of these accounts, I try to chide them into taking the software up to the next level of protection, but I’ve had little success with these attempts.

One of these days, there is going to be a TJ Maxx or Hannaford security breakdown that’s tracked to System i, and all those who’ve been touting the box’s strong security are going to be back-pedaling like mad.

I don’t really know what to do about this except to sing this song over and over again. I write a monthly column on System i security for Search400.com and I regularly raise these basic issues with my readers. I think that may be my small contribution — educating System i users on what they have and how to use it.

On Friday, I saw an unanswered iSeries-related question posted to IT Knowledge Exchange, and thought I’d shoot the question straight to one of our experts at Search400 to see if they could help.

Ljjk122 posted this question on ITKE: I want to add data from a DB2 file to an Excel template that has a header row and totals certain columns without overwriting the header row or the totals.

I sent the question to Kent Milligan at IBM, who said:
It’s not clear what mechanism you’re using to get the DB2 data into the Excel spreadsheet. If you’ve purchased the iSeries Access Data Transfer, there is a solution. The iSeries Access Data Transfer Excel Add-in has the ability to download data to a user-specified range of cells of a spreadsheet, overwriting only the data within the selected range.

If you don’t have a license for the iSeries Access Data Transfer solution, then you may also want to consider evaluating DB2 Web Query, which offers excellent integration with Excel.

We encourage anyone with an iSeries question to submit it to Search400’s Ask the Experts, where all of our experts are available to answer your questions.