Welcome to another edition of Talsco Weekly

News: POWER9 Forecast and the future outlook for IBM
Data Science: R Programming for the IBM i.
Development: What are microservices and how to get started using them on the IBM i.
ERP: Is your ERP Failing you? ERP infused with AI.
Trends: Data, AI, and DB2.

Photo by Josh Calabrese on Unsplash

News

Power9 sales are slowing. “IBM had seven straight quarters of revenue growth starting in Q4 2017, with 6 percent growth in Q1 2019 and 1 percent in Q2 2019, but sales dropped by 27 percent in Q3 2019 and 24 percent in Q4 2019.”

One possible reason for the decline in sales is due to the anticipation of the Power10 chip.

What does this tell us about the short, mid and long term future of the Power Systems Market?

One possible answer: Now that the sales for POWER9 based servers have slowed. Enterprise customers are starting to put the POWER9 Servers to work deploying AI and other data-intensive workloads.

“POWER9 was built from the ground up for AI and machine learning workloads and it excels driven, in part, to its superior accelerator technologies, memory addressability and threads per core.”

Is IBM Set For Sustained Growth?

While IBM i community focuses on the parts of IBM that are directly relevant to its own health. There is a bigger picture.

“On the surface, IBM’s fourth-quarter results provided cause for optimism.”

But as this financial analyst points out, the results are mixed. IBM’s different offerings are pulling in different directions.

Takeaway: The recent acquisition of Red Hat has yet to take hold. We will have to wait to see the results in the years to come.

IBM Ranks No. 1 in New Study

When it comes to AI and FinTech. IBM is at the top of the list. This is in part due to the use of AI, Cloud and Blockchain technologies. “IBM’s cloud and blockchain ecosystem is helping FinTechs, start-ups, developers and independent software vendors drive faster design and development.”

Data Science

R Programming for Data Science

We are starting to see more and more Data Science related openings in IBM i shops. Developers are being asked to organize and govern data in ways that have not done before.

Making better use of data. Instead of reporting against past data, data science is the practice in which data is used to predict the outcomes. One of the best languages that is used for this is the “R programming language”.

Yes, R runs on the IBM i.

Here is a history, overview and practical guide for how to get up and running with R.

Development

Microservices and IBM i Development

What are microservices? Microservices (microservice architecture) is an architectural style that structures an application as a collection of services that are:

Easy to maintain
Loosely coupled
Can be deployed independently
Focused around a business process

Microservices enable “the rapid, frequent and reliable delivery of large, complex applications. It also enables an organization to evolve its technology stack.”

Microservices are typically cloud-native and communicate with one another via REST API’s

Why should you use microservices? The traditional way of building enterprise applications can cause issues as applications become more and more complex. “Developers are turning to a microservices” as a collection of services that are easy to develop and scale. Take a look at the diagrams, and notice the difference between building monolithic applications vs a microservices approach.

Getting started with Microservices on IBM i

Depending on the business need, here are three examples of the technology that can be used to create microservice applications.

Spring-boot for creating Microservices with Java.
Seneca is a microservices toolkit for Node.js.
Flask is used for building microservices in Python.

ERP

The Future of AI and the Demands on ERP

“ERP systems need to lose their cumbersome heritage and open up to third-party applications, in order to help businesses benefit from technological innovations more quickly. This is a demand that ERP providers and user companies must meet in equal measure, as set out in the following four expectations for AI-enabled ERP.”

How to get ready for AI ERP

Does this sound familiar? “Current ERP systems are heavily customized, leading to a lack of interoperability as updates are rolled out.”

The good thing is, with AI this all could change.

Six Warning Signs Your ERP Might Fail

Your ERP is the lifeblood of the organization. It is a system of record where data flows in and out. As noted in our other summary above, ERP is changing and will look very different in the future.

Stepping back: Here are six warning signs that might need to be addressed with your ERP so you can move forward.

Trends

A modern data platform ready for the future of AI

It’s hard to argue that the future of technology in the enterprise, as well as the consumer market, is Data and AI.

In the past, ERP systems have been viewed as the core system or system of record. The future will be different.

It will be made up of a”AI-infused data management platform”.

Data will be at the center. Because “every data architect knows the value of keeping their data management platform up-to-date and ready for the next phase.”

IBM’s DB2 Hybrid Data Management Platform is one of the most advanced to date.

This article highlights how to build a data management platform for the future.

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