Welcome to another edition of Talsco Weekly

News: IBM is leading the way with private and public clouds. Imagine the IBM i on Azure.
API: API Management market growth surges.
Career: How to get things done without management support.
Leadership: Does the 4-day work week work? Are the AS/400 norms hurting us?
Modernization: What comes first, Modernization or Digital Transformation?
Trends: What you need to know about edge computing. 5G, IoT, AI, and ML.

News

Can IBM Cloud Unlock Digital Transformation?

A move to the cloud offers a way for companies to start down their digital transformation journey by taking advantage of different deployment models, open-source solutions and a variety of different architectures.

Technical debt straps so many organizations. Getting to the cloud is a way to start paying down some of that debt.

IBM and Bank Of America Partner to create public-cloud for Banks

Until now, banks have been unsure about using a public cloud to store customer financial data outside of their data centers. A new tool, developed by IBM and Bank of America offers the security necessary to meet banking regulatory and compliance requirements.

In the case of Bank of America, the move from the data center to private-clouds looks like this:

the bank is running 80% of its IT workloads in its private cloud, cutting the number of on-premise servers to 70,000 from 200,000 seven years ago. It operates 23 data centers, down from 60 in 2012. The bank said it now spends $2.1 billion less per year on infrastructure than it did in 2012. It now plans to gradually shift many of these workloads into the public cloud.

It is hard to argue about the cost savings of private-clouds. The move to public clouds will mean even more savings.

Will IBM i shops start to take advantage of both private and public clouds?

It looks like it.

IBM i on Microsoft Azure

Skytap earlier this year announced its Cloud Services for traditional business systems, offering IBM Power and AIX a path to the cloud. As IT Jungle reports, Microsoft is looking to bring the IBM i to Azure. While it is just in beta right now, they are testing the market to confirm demand.

Stepping back: All this talk of clouds can get confusing.

Private cloud: On-premise or data-center located resources that are used by one organization. This also includes resources provided by third-party.
Public cloud: Resources are owned by third-party (Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, IBM Cloud, Google Cloud Platform. Hardware, storage, and resources are shared with other organizations.
Hybrid cloud: A mix of on-premise, private and public cloud. The best of both worlds and where most start.

Why is this important: There are things you can do in the cloud that you can’t do on-prem which will allow our community to experiment with new and emerging technologies.

One thing is for sure, enterprise IT is changing and it is not confined to the walls of the datacenter anymore. Extending the reach of the IBM i means getting to the cloud.

Microsoft elaborates on its IBM i Azure Strategy

Looking for a smart way to modernize?

We have high-value RPG Consultants who have expertise in building API’s, web services, and open source solutions so you can extend the reach of your AS/400 applications.

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API

API Management Market to Witness Huge Growth by 2025

Enterprise API Management Solutions will become more common as organizations try to wrap their arms around modernization and digital transformation.

API Management industry has achieved significant growth since 2018

And their impact on the enterprise will continue to grow because they enable organizations to access both new and legacy technology.

IBM i shops who are leveraging API’s are realizing a big impact. Whether they are developed in-house or by using a third party it is allowing them to serve the business in ways they have not done before.

Career

How to Get Ahead When Your Boss Doesn’t Have Influence

This is a hard topic to discuss. Unfortunately, it is one of the reasons some AS/400 shops are lagging behind those running the IBM i.

The lack of knowledge about the platform and the ecosystem of products and services that are available, limit innovation. If IT leadership doesn’t have a good grasp of the IBM i’s potential, then it is really hard to have influence at the C-Level.

This is a time where the IBM i Architect, the RPG Expert, and the IBM i Business Analyst will have to seek out “like-minded” players in your organization who will help you innovate.

One way to do it is by building relationships with leaders in the company and get involved with their side projects.

Get their backing and together you can get some small wins that will get noticed.

Leadership

Microsoft tested a 4-day work week for some employees.

This might come as a surprise but Microsoft tested a 4 day work week.

And it found that four-day weeks and other reforms both boosted sales and cut costs.

Do Your Company Norms Promote the Behavior You Want?

A norm:

Something that is usual, typical, or standard.

Do the norms in your IT department drive the decisions you make?

Do the norms of your RPG developers (how they approach their daily work) predict the future?

Do they have you stuck in the past? Do they use SEU or RDi?

There are norms within the IBM i (AS/400) community that

are so ingrained that leaders don’t even think about them.

What are some of the norms that you see?

Do these norms create the perceptions of the platform that we want?

Are they holding us back?

Modernization

Technology is the engine of change

Vendor Lock-In inhibits modernization. Gone are the days where an organization can rely on one technology to be successful.

The acquisition of Red Hat has created a path forward. The need to manage enterprise workloads across multi-cloud is the future and Red Hat’s framework will allow for businesses to move from one cloud to another is a game-changer for IBM.

How a Digital Culture Can Drive Digital Transformation

“Digital culture is the key ingredient for digital transformations; it increases productivity and innovation in order to maintain a competitive edge”.

Why Digital Transformations Fail (book)

McKinsey & Company states that 70% of Digital Transformation efforts fail.

Two of the main reasons are the lack of planning and the lack of understanding the technology.

As Tony Saldanha, CEO of Transformant, points out in this podcast about his book, if you ask a group of CIO’s what Digital Transformation means, you might get different answers.

The reality is, for a company to transform it means you have to rewire the company. This is not an easy task.

In his book, “Why Digital Transformations Fail” he covers for Digital Transformations to succeed their needs to be a change in culture.

To change the culture there are two main ingredients:

A shift to focus on the customer first (Amazon refers to this as Customer Centricity)
A culture of smart risk-taking.

Implementing a culture where you take smart risks is a big challenge for any legacy organization.

For Digital Transformation to be successful, you have to have the right people in place.

Those who understand that driving digital transformation is different than anything they have ever done before. A culture of continual innovation and risk-taking will need to be woven into the fabric of the organization to be successful.

Trends

Why we need Edge Computing

Do we really need edge computing?

5G is making Edge computing possible. It allows for mobile devices or remote devices to bring data closer.

This means less centralized infrastructure, localized data processing, and faster systems overall.

Red Hat: The evolution of IoT and 5G technologies

Edge computing will bring about sensible solutions. Some of the current trends are

the intelligent use of data streams and telemetry for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

5G, IoT, ML and AI combined will bring about solutions that will save millions if not billions for healthcare, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, and automotive industries.

What are the benefits of 5G? Here are

Stepping back: For IBM i shops that are looking for ways to glue all of this together, look to open source solutions. As an option, we are seeing Node-RED being used to “wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services in new and interesting ways.”

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Photo by Felix Mittermeier on Unsplash