Blog

The COVID-19 crisis is forcing businesses across the globe to adapt to sudden operational disruption. IT, tasked with supporting the rapid, largely unplanned move to remote work, is truly on the front lines of the
effort to adapt day-to-day ops to a “socially distant” economy. 

Existing disaster recovery (DR) plans simply didn’t envision this type of scenario. The most common way to conceptualize the “disaster” in IT DR is a physical threat to your technology infrastructure: events like a flood, fire, or a storm that destroys key servers. In this context, businesses need a plan for scaling up alternative infrastructure as fast as possible. 

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The pace of change for ERP software is often dominated by urgent business imperatives: a new acquisition demands a major migration or implementation project, a new customer introduces a sudden need for more expansive reporting, or a new government regulation requires more robust data protection measures.

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As data protection regulations proliferate and technology systems become more and more indispensable for day-to-day operations, security is becoming a bigger and bigger part of the job description for enterprise IT teams.

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Field Level Security in IBMi allows you to protect data in legacy applications without creating risks to application stability: this feature is implemented so that restricting data access doesn’t require extensive re-development which may create new errors in complex application logic. 

These precise protections offer an important opportunity to secure sensitive data in legacy applications quickly and painlessly without modifying the application layer.

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International trade conflict has brought about a global resurgence of tariffs and other trade restrictions. This trend has driven reams of high-level commentary on the macroeconomic effects of these disruptions to existing international commerce flows. 

In this blog, we set aside that high-level policy discussion to take a look at the practical business problems created for manufacturers by tariffs—and how technology can be used to respond.

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When managing a portfolio of enterprise applications, choosing the right support option presents a chronic strategic dilemma. While vendors offer unmatched expertise for new product offerings, their commitment to past versions of the same software can fade fast. Meanwhile, third-party support providers introduce opportunities for more customization (and broader cooperation across different applications and projects). 

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Manufacturing companies face pressure from just about every direction to keep their business moving forward despite huge IT challenges like tight budgets, retiring staff and limited resources. But for those who are using a legacy system transitioning to a new ERP system can be an even greater challenge. 

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Industrial Internet of Things, Manufacturing 4.0, Smart Manufacturing, The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Industry 4.0 — these are all pseudonyms that generally refer to the same concept — technology that enables connected operations and production systems that can predict or adapt to changes in the facility or broader environment to provide a better outcome. It is a mouthful with powerful implications. The advantages of a full connected production and delivery system with automated data collection is very appealing to those in the food and beverage industry.  

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Disaster recovery can be a business lifesaver. It can also lead to a realization that great technology alone isn’t enough without the right test plan.

Here we’ll share the story of two organizations who recently implemented the same disaster recovery solutions, each one harnessing the same IBM i technology. Both organizations planned for a seamless failover with near zero impact to the users. Yet the results for each organization were drastically different. Why?

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Quite often, the terms value chain management and supply chain management are used interchangeably. While they overlap and are ultimately complementary, they are in fact two separate yet critical terms that impact your organizational success.

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