I've got a golden ticket...to IBM Innovate in June

Now, I am excited. I just got confirmed as a speaker at the Rational conference this June, now dubbed "IBM Innovate". This makes my fourth straight year of this conference, and my second year presenting. I submitted 3 abstracts, but this is the one that got accepted. Here is my session abstract:

Session: PWR-1068A: Spicing up your green screens with HATS and Dojo

When: Wed, 9/Jun, 01:45 PM - 02:45 PM
Where: Swan - Europe 11

Current abstract:
Learn to take your green sceen apps to Web 2.0 with HATS and the Dojo Tookit. IBM Rational HATS comes with many default templates making it easy to deploy a solution for green screens very quickly. However we'll show you how you can take advantage of the underlying Rational Application Developer and the Dojo Toolkit feature to really make your applications shine. The toolkit also gives you the ability to add features to your application that is easier to implement than writing custom components, while being cross-browser compliant.

When we submit our abstracts, what you see above is all we have to submit. The actual presentation gets submitted much later. In fact, few people even start on this until they know they've been confirmed to speak.

In case you are curious, here is the subjects of my other two abstracts that did not get approved:

• Automate RPG deployment with iANT and RTCi
• Regression Testing Terminal Based Systems

If anyone is really interested, and would like a webinar type of presentation, I might just do one on these if I get enough interest. For now, I'm going to focus on getting my approved abstract all 'purty'.


With that, let me ask you:

• Are you going to Innovate? (cool double entendre isn't it?)
  
• Are you using Dojo now?
  
• What other JavaScript kits are you using?
• What other neat GUI tricks would you like to see more of?

I'll take your suggestions and put these into my presentation and we'll see you at Innovate.

Looking for a few good men (or women as the case may be)

No, I'm not in the dating marking. Actually we are looking for some help as Strongback is growing these days. I'm posting here since I get much more traffic than the web site. Eventually, we'll have a careers section. Here are the positions we are considering:

Account Executive
Experienced sales executive skilled in the ways and means of IBM land, particularly IBM software. Prior experience in VMWare and Novell software is a definite plus. This person must be able to generate leads, manage client relationships, cultivate customer loyalty, and identify cross-sell opportunities. Ideal candidate will be able to close software deals without technical sales support. Candidate will be responsible for a large territory, and also responsible for coordinating outbound marketing tactics.
Location: Orlando

QA Consultant
We need an experienced QA engineer who has a history as a consultant. Experience with Rational products such as Functional Tester and Performance Tester are a must. Candidate will work with customers to implement IBM Rational software, and mentor customers on creating automated tests and creating test plans. Rational Quality Manager experience is highly desired, but not required (expect to learn it otherwise). Candidate is expected to travel, specifically in the SouthEastern US and Puerto Rico.
Location: Central Florida (Orlando, Tampa, Daytona)

Virtualization/Middleware Consultant
Expertise in all of VMware portfolio. Experience with IBM WebSphere middleware a huge plus. Candidate must possess technical certifications in VMWare. Candidate can expect significant travel, specifically in the SouthEastern US and Puerto Rico.
Location: Atlanta, Orlando


Send your questions and resumes to hello@strongbackconsulting.com.

*NOTE: All candidates are subject to a criminal background check as required due to our relationships with our vendors. Strongback is an equal opportunity employer and does NOT discriminate with regard to race, religion, ethnicity, sexual preference, or national origin. Strongback does, however have a strong policy against smoking. We neither hire nor retain smokers. Employees who smoke are subject to immediate termination. Former smokers are subject to reduced benefits.

POWER7 PVU licensing changes (or lack thereof)

Last week, IBM announced the new POWER7 architecture chip. I won't get into the details about the processor technology, but suffice it to say, its packs a punch. The real question, is how does it affect software licensing? These processors come in 4, 6, and 8 core versions, meaning that on an 8 way system, you could have as much as 64 processor cores in operation.

IBM's software licensing is based on either authorized user, floating user, concurrent user, or processor value unit (PVU for short). The PVU scale varies based on the processor and the processor version. For example, POWER 5 is typically rated at 100 PVU's per processor core. POWER6 bumps up to 120PVU's per core. Surprisingly POWER7 is generously rated at no more than 120 PVU's per core on the higher level machines, and 100 PVU's on the lower 750/755 series. This means if you are upgrading from POWER6 to a POWER7 your software licensing costs may not change at all. If you were planning on moving from POWER5 to POWER6, you can instead bump up to POWER7 with approximately the same licensing cost difference but substantial performance gains - or reduce your licensing costs and obtain the same performance.

The entire chart on how to calculate your PVU is shown below. Keep in mind that if you have 8 cores, you could have your system partitioned via LPAR or a POWERVM, and utilize only 2 cores for example for that one virtual system.



There were a TON of other announcements last week. I'll post those separately as time allows.
Keep an eye out for Rational Developer for POWER Systems, Rational Team Concert for POWER Systems, and the new Rational Compilers for POWER Systems.

HATS Webinar on Feb 19th

Strongback is offering a webinar on Rational Host Access Transformation Services on Friday February 19th at 11AM. If you have been considering or have used the product in the past, please join us on this webcast.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Lotus Symphony 3.0 beta now available

This posted on EdBrill.com just moments ago:

Key new features in Symphony 3.0:

• VB Macros support
• ODF 1.2 support for improved file interoperability
• embedded audio/video allows users to add media directly to slides, documents and sheets
• autotext support to create "chunks" of text that are used frequently and quickly inserted
• digital signatures
• redline support --- shows edits made to document
• usability enhancements

I know some are asking, "What happened to Symphony 2.0?" The answer is, since this new release is aligned with the OpenOffice 3.x codebase, we chose to move the version number up to alignment. Symphony 3.0 is going to be exciting and further help liberate IT organizations from paying high Microsoft taxes -- get started now by downloading the beta and providing feedback.

I have the 1.0 version, and have consistently preferred the OpenOffice 3.0 over Symphony as OO was more robust, performed better, and had a better features. I'm anxious for this to go GA.

Crazy Error: VMware Infrastructure Web Service at "http://localhost:8222/sdk" is not responding

This morning, I had to add some patches to my VMWare server (yes, I need to move over to ESX), and needed to reboot. Upon bootup, when trying to get into the Virtual Infrastructure management console, I was presented with the ominus error message "The VMware Infrastructure Web Service at "http://localhost:8222/sdk" is not responding (Connection Refused).".

Not sure what it was, and assuming it was a kernel problem (which I did install multiple kernel patches on my Suse machine, I downloaded the latest release of VMware server and installed it. The vmware-config.pl script ran into a couple of errors as well. The Internets came up with a few results:
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/176054
http://www.stknetwork.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=77:vmwareserver-error-sdk&catid=41:configuration-examples-misc&Itemid=76

However, these are all related to VMWare server running on Vista 64. Mine is a 64 bit OpenSuse Linux machine. The solution to the Windows problem was to add a localhost entry to the hosts file. Well, I had a host file and had no problem with it previously.

I then tried to telnet to localhost:8222 and it bombed, but telnet to 127.0.0.1:8222 worked fine. I double checked, and lo and behold, I no longer had the localhost:127.0.0.1 entry. Once I added that, I reran the vmware-config.pl and restarted vmware, and voila! it worked!

SO - lesson is, make sure you have the above entry in your /etc/hosts file!