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Archives: 2017

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Finding an Audience

Posted on November 14, 2017 by Bill Langston

As a software vendor focused exclusively on the IBM i market, we often read or hear IBM i IT professionals complain about IBM marketing or the way competing vendors have managed to surround and discredit IBM i in their company. The general theme of most these discussions is that IBM i is the Rodney Dangerfield of computing platforms. We understand the sentiment, but our perspective on it might surprise you. Read more

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Enterprise Software and Real Estate—Surprisingly Similar

Posted on October 13, 2017 by Bill Langston

The region where NGS is based is growing rapidly and experiencing a real estate boom. Of course, every buyer needs a seller and nearly every seller must become a buyer. For long-time residents of this area, rising home prices mean that the price of buying a smaller home is very likely equal to or greater than the price of selling a larger one; buying a new home comparable in size to the one being sold will cost substantially more. Read more

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IBM User Groups: COMMON and SHARE

Posted on August 23, 2017 by Bill Langston

As you may know, COMMON is the largest IBM user group providing education to IT professionals who work on IBM POWER systems. SHARE is a similarly organized user group for IT professionals working on the IBM Z or “mainframe” platform. A friend at another company recently mentioned they were attending the SHARE conference. That casual comment lead me to do some research. Read more

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The Cost of Change

Posted on August 2, 2017 by David Gillman

Many companies seeking to change their ERP application weigh the pros and cons, comparing the cost of change against the benefits of a new system. There are lots of hard costs in everyone’s numbers—hardware, software license, implementation, and customization charges add up quickly. Read more

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Qport Office—The Best Little Utility for 20-Year-Old ERP

Posted on July 18, 2017 by David Gillman

We continue to add customers for our Qport Office utility. It is a software application which takes Query/400 produced output and automates the process of delivering the data to the business user’s Excel, Word and other applications. Read more

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There Is Still Time to Learn

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Bill Langston

NGS customers who are current on maintenance can take advantage of a variety of valuable, free, and educational offerings. These offerings include online tutoring sessions, share and learn Webinars, on demand videos, and even onsite product reviews with NGS product specialists traveling in your area. Most of these offerings only require an hour or two of your time. I hope you or your coworkers have taken advantage of some of these services and found them very helpful. Read more

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Decision Trees vs. Coding on IBM i

Posted on June 20, 2017 by David Gillman

In machine learning, decision trees are a great algorithm family to work with business information. They are not the most precise nor are they considered cutting edge, but they are a first pass algorithm for many data scientists. Maybe in version two of a project, another algorithm family might create a better model for delivering a reliable model, but over most types of transaction or ERP data, decision trees as a class are where most data scientists start. Read more

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Missing Data – The “Green” Revolution Continues

Posted on June 13, 2017 by David Gillman

Many machine learning and predictive processes struggle when they encounter missing data; entire records are bypassed if one field value is missing in the algorithm. For example, in a decision tree, if no value exists for the field where the tree splits, that record is useless because the algorithm cannot say what tree branch the record needs to follow. Read more

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The “Green” Revolution Rolls On

Posted on June 6, 2017 by David Gillman

Someone messaged me to point out my title of the “Green” Revolution last week might also refer to IBM i and its heritage with green screen terminal interfaces. Read more

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Clean Data—A Current “Green” Revolution

Posted on May 30, 2017 by David Gillman

Good quality data is never a bad thing. For fueling analytic processes, it is a must. In order to maximize return on the investment in machine learning and predictive analytics, companies need clean data as a foundation for analysis. (My use of “green” in the title refers to making money for those outside the US.) Read more

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Watson and IBM i Data—Knowledge Necessary

Posted on May 16, 2017 by David Gillman

There is a lot of confusion as to what companies can do with IBM Watson.  At least Watson is architected so that any system can access it by processing via program calls over the Internet. Programmers need only to communicate input and receive output to make use of Watson-based analytics. Read more

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Still Spending Time and Money with Query/400 and File Transfer Tools to Get Data to Users?

Posted on February 16, 2017 by David Gillman

In a recently completed survey of non-customers, we found that analysts who used Query/400 reported spending an average of 1.625 hours per day extracting, manipulating, and distributing data. We know from previous studies that people who move to NGS-IQ typically cut the time they spend on these tasks by approximately 50%. Read more

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IoT and IBM i

Posted on February 2, 2017 by David Gillman

While it’s unlikely that many companies will store their IoT device messages in the IBM i environment, it's easy to imagine most IBM i customers having systems (maybe cloud based) that store IoT message streams alongside their Db2 on i/ERP database. Read more

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