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Managing the DevOps process effectively on IBM i

DevOps is a set of practices used by developers and IT teams to speed up the development process and speed-to-market of applications.

Short for development and operations, DevOps relies on the entire team working together to get software changes through development faster.

It helps you to design the entire software and application lifecycle process, from idea to change, to test and then into production with deployment.

IBM i is perhaps one of the most secure, reliable and flexible development platforms available for enterprise IT teams.

In fact, 92% of IBM i users rate the platform higher than any other server options in terms of delivering ROI – and 25% plan to increase their IBM i footprint in 2021.

 

It all starts with a change request

The first stage of the DevOps process – as with any change management – is the change request. Requesting a change – and making the change in the right way – is where it all starts.

You need a place for businesses to request changes. This can be documented in an Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheets, or in a dedicated solution. You just need a way to gather all the requirements for a change request from the organisation.

Impact analysis

That change request will then at some point land with the technical team.

The technical team needs to be able to make an impact analysis of that change.

They need to have the tools to decide whether it’s a feasible change (hint: you could investigate X-Analysis from Fresche for impact analysis on IBM i).

As an example, if a customer were to request a change to add a field to the customer database, it could be the case that this change would touch half of the application.

Using a tool to notice potential issues early allows you to potentially decide on a different strategy, instead of diving into the development and finding all these issues as you go.

There could be other solutions that will allow you to reach the same goal without having such a big impact on the rest of the application.

Coding

The next step is your coding.

Figure out what kind of development environment to provide for your developers. Even if they have always worked in the green screen, there may be other solutions and tools out there that can help them to be more productive.

Those tools could include graphical editing outlines in the application or in sources, so you know the structure of your application, conversion from old style to new style, or putting the debugging process at the fingertips of the developer in the coding area.

All these things can be improved significantly on the IBM i.

Quality control

Unit Testing

The DevOps process itself gives you quality control, with Unit Testing the preferred method.

Even just one Unit Testing program is already infinitely better than having zero Unit Tests – and they can build up quickly.

With a team of 20 developers creating just one Unit Test a week, you will have 20 in a week. 80 in a month. By the end of the year, you’ll have 1000 Unit Tests, which is a significant number.

Peer review

An alternative to Unit Testing is peer review. Instead of putting changes to test, developers can ask a colleague to compare the sources side by side and see what was changed. Just by looking at the source code with a fresh pair of eyes, quality is already improved.

In fact, just the prospect of peer review tends to improve code quality, as no developer wants their mistakes pointed out by a colleague!

Ticketing system

You can also manage the whole chain of development in a ticketing system.

If the developer has the ticket at the fingertips, they can easily mark changes as fixed.

The user who filed the request will then get a message that it has been resolved. That improves user satisfaction, as they get to approve the change before it goes into production. When users sign off on a change, the quality of the testing process will also improve significantly.

Deployment

Finally, of course, you need to deploy the changes.

Once it is tested and the user has given their final approval, any automated process can pick up those tasks that are ready to go and then deploy them in a window when it is possible.

 

About Remain Software and TD/OMS

TD/OMS is a collaborative multi-platform software change management tool from Remain Software. It follows industry DevOps change management standards, adapting them for DevOps on IBM i. TD/OMS supports change and application life cycle management on IBM i, from development and testing to acceptance and deployment. TD/OMS enables businesses of any size to go to market quickly, with high-quality software applications and minimal bugs.

The post How do you manage the DevOps process on IBM i appeared first on Proximity.

For organisations running business-critical applications on the IBM i, supporting and maintaining those applications now and into the future is a key challenge.

Those organisations are looking strategically at their IT strategies and IT application landscape over the next five, ten and fifteen years to find a way to not only ‘keep the lights on’ with their existing IBM i applications, but in a lot of cases develop additional functionality or transform outdated green on black interfaces to a modern UI.

The types of applications that typically run on the IBM i also tend to be business-critical by their very nature – making downtime a significant risk to the business.

Additionally, many of the development teams who first implemented and configured those IBM i applications twenty or thirty years ago have started to move on or are reaching retirement age.

So, how can organisations continue to support, maintain and develop their IBM i applications?

One clear solution is to outsource IBM i software support, maintenance and development to a partner like Proximity.

 

Why choose Proximity for IBM i application support, maintenance and development?

A depth of IBM i experience & expertise

Proximity developers have a combined experience of over 307 years, developing, supporting and maintaining applications on the IBM i (and its past guises as the AS400, iSeries and System i).

We also have a number of long-standing relationships with customers, both large and medium-sized across the UK, Ireland, Europe and further afield across a wide range of industry sectors.

Customers like Gebrüder Weiss, DB Schenker, Wilko, and Draper Tools which allows us to develop close working relationships and a deep understanding of their operations, software and the wider industry in which they operate.

Learn more about some of our customers and their success stories here.

Working across many programming languages on IBM i

We can support, maintain and develop applications across a number of programming languages, including (but not limited to):

PHP
HTML
CSS
JavaScript
Java
RPG
COBOL
CA 2E.

Supporting, maintaining & developing IBM i applications across many sectors

We support, maintain and develop IBM i applications for a number of sectors, including:

Logistics
Supply chain
Retail
Food & beverage
Finance & banking
Manufacturing.

Proximity also developed and launched Stream on the IBM i. Stream is a powerful cloud-based delivery, logistics and fleet management software application that is accessed on your web browser.

 

Just some of our IBM i based customers

Within those sectors, here are examples of three of Proximity’s IBM i development, support and maintenance customers:

Wilko

Proximity helped high-street retailer Wilko to de-risk their IBM i applications, by transferring existing IBM i developers through TUPE augmenting the IT team, as well as taking on support, development and maintenance of IBM i structure and core business applications.

DB Schenker

DB Schenker are one of world’s largest transportation and logistics service providers. Proximity design, develop and maintain applications for International transport management system (ITMS), CIEL transport & warehouse management system, e Services for European land transport, and Business Intelligence, providing DB Schenker with development, support and maintenance services to manage a number of core business-critical applications on the IBM i.

Gebrüder Weiss

Gebrüder Weiss are the oldest transport company in the world. Proximity has a dedicated team of developers working on behalf of Gebrüder Weiss, to support a number of IBM i-based applications predominately using RPG. In 2013, Gebrüder Weiss’ launched the Freight Rate Tool across Europe using the native DB2 database and some RPG business logic.

 

Established partnerships with leading IBM i vendors

As well as established relationships with IBM, Proximity has partnerships with leading IBM i vendors including Fresche Solutions, Remain Software, Raz-Lee, Maxava, Ivanti, Zend and StayLinked.

These partnerships give our customers access to products across:

GUI, Web & Mobile Enablement & Development
IBM i Analysis, Monitoring & Productivity
Terminal Emulation & Windows CE migration
IBM i reporting & documentation distribution
IBM i security.

Learn more about these products here.

Get in touch to talk about how Proximity can help your business to support, maintain and develop business-critical applications on the IBM i applications.

The post Why choose Proximity for IBM i Application Support, Maintenance & Development? appeared first on Proximity.

Reliability.

Security.

Low cost of ownership.

We’ve long shouted about the benefits of the IBM i platform.

Now, it’s more than just shouting.

IBM and Forrester Consulting have put some data behind those claims, in their Total Economic Impact of IBM i report.

How the IBM i improves productivity – while cutting downtime and admin costs

The IBM environment integrates an operating system with a database, virtualisation layer, application server, and transactional system. Businesses can easily reduce system downtime, cut admin support costs, and improve productivity.

In fact, the study shows businesses making 171% ROI, with payback in as little as eight months.

Quantified benefits

Reduced system downtime – The study found that IBM i reduced the number of times an organisation experienced downtime – eliminating four instances every year, and saving an average of $125k (approx. £90k)
Reduced technical support costs – As an integrated platform, IBM i makes it easy for technical support teams to proactively focus on other systems. This allows functions, such as systems and
database administration, to be combined and reduces technical
support hours by up to 33%, saving an average of $255k (approx. £162k)
Improved productivity – business unit employee productivity grows as more tasks are automated. This allows 6,240 business unit employee hours to be repurposed annually, saving around $158k (approx. £114k).

Unquantified benefits

As well as the financially quantifiable benefits of an IBM i system, participants in the study also reported money-can’t-buy benefits like:

Peace-of-mind about uptime
Trust in security against malware
Easy integration with extensive IBM software, tools, and in-house developed applications.

Costs

There are (of course) some costs that come with an IBM i system. These include:

The cost of an IBM Power Systems server – with enough performance and storage capacity to handle your applications
Monthly maintenance fees – for upkeep and support of your IBM i environment
IBM i licences – to manage and operate an ERP system, alongside any other applications you need.

The report found though, that over three years, the financial benefits far outweigh the costs – representing an ROI of 171%.

About the Total Economic Impact Of IBM i report

You can download the report here

Taking the example of four current IBM i users, the report compares the costs, benefits, flexibility and risks of their current system versus the system they used previously.

It combines that data into a single composite view, or Total Economic Impact (TEI) which examines some of the IBM i server’s unique financial characteristics, and the potential ROI of an IBM i deployment.

 

The post How IBM i improves productivity – while cutting downtime and admin costs appeared first on Proximity.