Cultivating Collaboration

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1 i5 Business Systems ISSUE # 57 AUGUST 2006 ASEAN/SA EDITION Workplace Simplifies Document-Library Management Page 14 Aviva Thailand Consolidates with IBM to Enhance Efficiency Page 22 Cultivating Collaboration How IBM Workplace products can nurture a cohesive environment Page 8

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3 Editor's Corner I N S I D E # 57 AUGUST 2006 COVER STORY Working in a Collaborative Land 8 What is IBM Workplace and how do i get it? By Kim Greene, cover illustration by Robert Crawford FEATURE Meet Workplace Document Management 14 Workplace simplifies document-library management. By Amy Hoerle COLUMNS Editor s Corner 1 Administrator 3 Taking Advantage of Open-Application Interfaces Spotlight 20 Taking Some Pain Out of IT Auditing: Tango/04 Data Monitor by Tango/04 March 2006 commemorated the Systems Magazine s first edition of ASEAN/South Asia with Australasia. It was an exciting moment and I promise you more to come! We are on the verge of launching a new and more riveting Systems Magazine with greater collaboration on an Asia Pacific level! In the meantime, get some fantastic tips on IBM Workplace in this month s Cover Story where Kim Greene details what it s like Working in a Collaborative Land on page 8. Focusing on WCS, WSE and the WebSphere Portal servers, this is an in-depth look at their functions and benefits all the way to licensing options. Turn to page 22 to read about how Aviva Insurance a leading insurance company in Thailand worked hand in hand with IBM to consolidate their multiple server environment onto a single IBM System i 550 system. Their result? A reduced annual hardware and software maintenance fees by a whopping 60 percent! Finally, I think you ll also enjoy this month s EndPGM column. Neil Tardy writes about how John Vanderwall travels all the way from the USA to the former Soviet Republic to spread the word that business starts with little more than a single idea and some essential knowledge. No matter where we are, I believe his credo of Business people need to go and give others hope for a better life, resonates with all of us. And there you have it! Remember to look out for our next issue it ll be a groundbreaking one! The Editor (iseries@my.ibm.com) Customer s Testimonial 22 Aviva Thailand Consolidates with IBM to Enhance Efficiency ENDPGM 24 John Vanderwall s Mission is Teaching Business Basics in Kazakhstan and Beyond Page 8 Page 14 This publication could contain technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. Also, illustrations contained herein may show prototype equipment. Your system configuration may differ slightly. This publication contain small programs that are furnished by IBM as simple examples to provide an illustration. These examples have not been thoroughly tested under all conditions. IBM, therefore, cannot guarantee or imply reliability, serviceability, or function of these programs. All programs contained herein are provided to you as is implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are expressly disclaimed. All rights reserved. Names of products and services marked with * may be trademarks of their respective companies. This IBM Systems Magazine ASEAN/SA Edition is produced for IBM by Thumb-Print Studio. AUGUST 2006 IBM SYSTEMS MAGAZINE, ASEAN/SA EDITION 1

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5 Administrator Getting the most from your systems Taking Advantage of Open-Application Interfaces BY ANDREW SLOMA It s hard to miss the push toward open standards with IBM* System products. It s equally hard to pin the title of proprietary database on the IBM DB2* Universal Database* (UDB) for i5/os*. The integrated database has support for a whole suite of industry-standard programming interfaces. These open-standard interfaces provide a flexible alternative to some of the legacy interfaces like DDS and other native record-level interfaces. In V5R4, the System i* platform has shown continued commitment to the industry standard for database access by completing full support of the core level of the SQL 2003 standard, becoming one of the first DBMS to do so. As a result, the foundation for these open-application interfaces has been laid by the underlying database engine. These new SQL enhancements can be used by open-application interfaces such as the call-level interface (CLI), JDBC, ODBC and.net. Applications based on these open standards can achieve increased compatibility across the DB2 platforms, as well as take advantage of these new SQL enhancements in V5R4. The goal of these SQL interfaces is to increase the applications portability and flexibility by enabling them to become independent of any one database server. One of the core strategic initiatives of DB2 on i5/os has been the push for full compatibility with the SQL standard. Therefore, an investment in the functional compatibility and robustness of these dataaccess interfaces fits neatly into the overall initiatives of DB2 UDB for i5/os. A significant number of thirdparty software vendors in the System i space have also made the transition from the native record-level interfaces to SQL, lending further credence to the power of a standard like SQL. This article describes enhancements to these open-application interfaces in V5R4. I ll also briefly discuss recent enhancements from prior releases that could be very handy in many users applications. Two Perspectives A logical way to separate the interfaces is to look at them from a client- and server-side perspective. The client interfaces enable remote DB2 access from a Microsoft* Windows*, Linux* or AIX* platform. These interfaces typically use middleware to access the DB2 UDB for i5/os. The server-side interfaces enable DB2 access from programs running on i5/os. Programs running directly on the System i platform should use the server-side interfaces to take advantage of their performance benefits. The server-side interfaces also can make remote system connections using DRDA. The server-side interface, CLI, is a popular dynamic SQL programming interface built on the ISO Call Level Interface International Standard, originally defined by The Open Group. It can be thought of as a server-side version of ODBC in many respects. A unique feature of CLI on the System i platform is server mode, which provides benefits both from a functional and performance perspective. Links to more information on the CLI APIs can be found in the More Resources sidebar (page 6). The JDBC driver included with IBM Developer Kit for Java* JDBC is recommended for use when the Java program and database tables are on the same System i platform. This JDBC driver is referred to as the native JDBC driver. Native JDBC is considered a type 2 driver because it s tied to the System i platform through its use of CLI to access the database. It provides support for the JDBC 3.0 standard. More information can be found through the JDBC links in the More Resources sidebar. Robot/SCHEDULE manages your jobs across OS/400, AIX, Windows and UNIX

6 Toolbox for JDBC is primarily used as a client-side interface, making use of the host server to process database commands. A client-side solution is the ODBC driver that s part of iseries* Access for Windows ODBC. This driver is modeled after the Microsoft implementation of the ISO CLI standard. Think of it as a superset of the CLI. Toolbox for JDBC is primarily used as a client-side interface, making use of the host server to process database commands. The Toolbox JDBC driver is a type 4 driver that can run on any Java Virtual Machine (JVM) since it s a pure Java driver. This JDBC implementation is recommended for Java programs running in another JVM to the DB2 UDB for i5/os or if the connection is to a remote server. The open-standards initiative has been carried a step further with the JTOpen project ( developerworks/projects/jt400). This interface provides the support of IBM Toolbox for Java as well as other open-source enhancements, all of which are freely available open-source code. Finally, another popular solution is the iseries Access for Windows.NET interface, which is built on the Microsoft ADO.NET architectural model. This is useful for applications that want to make use of the.net framework from Microsoft. It s ideally suited for developers who want to move their Windows environment to DB2. Lastly, the DB2 Connect* Unlimited Edition for iseries product from the IBM Software Group also provides an implementation of ODBC, JDBC and.net. The iseries Access interfaces and the server-side interfaces are all included as part of the base operating system at no extra charge. If you appreciate visuals, like me, Figure 1 (opposite page) provides a chart summarizing these interfaces into DB2 UDB for i5/os. Enhancements for All Let s address some of the specific V5R4 enhancements that apply to all of the interfaces. The database now supports 2 MB SQL statements. This limit was increased from 64 KB and applies to single-byte characters. Some applications, like IBM iseries Navigator, use JDBC to pass double-byte Unicode characters. This new limit allows for 1 MB worth of characters for applications passing in Unicode data. Today many business applications automatically generate SQL statements that can get long and complex, and this support for writing larger SQL statements makes it easier for their applications to run on i5/os. Users of SQL stored procedure should find this limit expansion particularly helpful, as stored procedures can get large when adding complex business logic into the procedure. Several other limits were also increased in the latest DB2 UDB and are supported in the application interfaces. Column names were expanded from a 30-byte maximum length to 128 bytes. Programmers can use the larger limit to be more descriptive in their column naming. Also, support for up to 1,024 parameters in a C/C++ and SQL stored procedure was added. This expansion of the parameter limit makes procedures more flexible and powerful. Support for IBM Enterprise Workload Manager (EWLM) has been added to the DB2 UDB for i5/os programming interfaces. With many businesses running work in a mixed platform, multitiered application environment, it can be hard to track and analyze the performance of their work requests. The EWLM support is part of a System i solution that addresses this difficulty. EWLM allows an application to define businessoriented performance goals for an entire domain of servers, and then provides an end-to-end view of actual performance relative to those goals. With EWLM, you can ensure that work requests are performing according to your expectation. The V5R4 enhancements make it easy to instrument your DB2 workloads for EWLM. The Open Group s Application Response Measurement (ARM) 4.0 standard is implemented through a set of APIs that instrument an EWLM workload. A mechanism called a correlator is passed through the different layers of the workload. The ability to pass a EWLM correlator was added to all of the open-client interfaces. For example, the Java toolbox class AS400JDBCConnection contains a new method, setdb2ewlmcorrelator, which allows the correlator to be set for a connection: setdb2ewlmcorrelator public void setdb2ewlmcorrelator (byte[] bytes)throws SQLException Parameters: bytes - The ewlm correlator value Native JDBC provides access to a correlator through the DB2Connection class. The CLI also allows for the use of a correlator through the new connection attribute SQL_ATTR_ CORRELATOR, which is set on the API SQLSetConnectAttr(). More information on the full EWLM solution can be found online ( v1r1/en_us/index.htm?info/ewlminfo/kickoff.htm). For users of native JDBC, full support for the new 32-bit JVM is included in addition to the 64-bit JVM that s currently supported. The new JVM leaves a smaller memory footprint and gives a performance boost when running some Java native Centralise the monitoring of all your servers with Robot/CONSOLE

7 With many businesses running work in a mixed platform, multitiered application environment, it can be hard to track and analyze the performance of their work requests. The EWLM support is part of a System i solution that addresses this difficulty. methods in AIX. The new 32-bit native JDBC driver has been included in the db2_classes.jar file and can be used by setting the JAVA_HOME environment variable to /QOpenSys/QIBM /ProdData/JavaVM/jdk50/32bit. The iseries Access.NET Data Provider, also known as the iseries native.net provider, has added a variety of new functionalities in V5R4. Datatype support was expanded in V5R4 by providing support for large objects (LOBs), along with Time, TimeStamp, Decimal and Char for Bit Data. Also, conversion between numeric and character datatypes is now supported. Users have the ability to specify either library or system naming when running their SQL statements through the.net data provider. Additionally, multiple active result sets can now be managed within the same connection. This is a nice benefit for users who implement threading to get more SQL work done in parallel. Finally, a new feature, IntelliSense, is available as part of the iseries Access product to aid in programming in this environment. Recent releases of DB2 have expanded the implementation of The Open Group s Distributed Transaction Processing (DTP) model by enabling a set of functions called the XA APIs. This support allows changes to unrelated resources, potentially across multiple jobs, to be tracked in a single global transaction. A practical application of this support would include having several i5/os jobs making committable DB2 UDB changes under the same XA transaction. These jobs would be grouped together under the same transaction by using a globally unique transaction identifier value. Another example would be to include IBM DB2 UDB changes, along with Oracle database changes, and even other non-database changes all in the same XA transaction. V5R4 extended XA support to include The Open Group DRDA client/server architecture. This allows drivers that use DRDA to take advantage of XA support when running to a distributed data cource. DB2 Connect Unlimited Edition for iseries, JDBC and CLI are a few of the drivers that make use of DRDA for their distributed connections. A new connection property for XA was added in the Toolbox JDBC to specify whether locks can be shared between the loosely coupled distributed transaction branches. V5R4 also externalized the CLI support of XA through the connection attributes. More robust error handling and improved documentation in the CLI reference manual also make XA more usable through CLI. An example of XA work through CLI can be found online ( index.jsp?topic=/rzaik/rzaikappodbc.htm). The open applications implement a flavor of SQL called dynamic SQL, which prepares the statement at runtime instead of at precompile time like static SQL. As a result, it s important that applications make use of some simple programming techniques such as using parameter markers in their SQL statements, closing out unneeded resources and using multiple threads. V5R4 enabled some additional performance options. Toolbox JDBC and CLI have both added the option OPTIMIZATION GOAL to their connection-level properties. By specifying FIRST_IO, the application can force the optimization of queries to return the output of the first page faster. ALL_IO optimizes with the goal of running the entire query to completion in the shortest amount of elapsed time. A good way to visualize these options is to think of the FIRST_IO option as a bike and the ALL_IO option as an airplane. If there s only a short distance to cover, such as a sprint, then the bike is most likely the best option since virtually no startup costs are involved. However, despite the higher startup costs, over a longer distance, the ALL_IO is definitely the better solution. Understanding the distance, or the query s output behavior, is crucial in determining the most effective option for the individual query. A new mechanism called an SQL descriptor was added to the database in V5R4. Many of the open-application interfaces make Figure 1 Worried about the health of your i5? Check out Robot/CHECKUP

8 use of the SQL descriptor in their internal input and output interactions with the database. The SQL descriptor brings extendibility, scalability and performance improvements to these interfaces without any changes required of the programs using the interfaces. So from a user s perspective, this is a free and hidden improvement. Additionally, improved reuse as a result of the new SQL descriptors has led to performance gains in response time and temporary storage usage in the client job. Lab results on several workloads have shown 10-percent improvements in CPU usage measurements. Results can vary for different workloads, depending on a number of different environmental and application settings. Many CLI users implement the server-mode option for their environments. The server-mode option allows a single CLI environment to make multiple connections, each with its own user profile and commitment-control definition. Each connection is scoped to its own separate job that s pulled from a pool of prestart jobs. The SQL requests are then routed to these server jobs. To take advantage of potential performance improvements, many multithreaded applications use server mode in concert with connection or statement pooling. Native JDBC by default also uses server mode. Most native JDBC applications using the connection pools with the DB2ConnectionPoolDataSource class are implementing an environment similar to this. These strategies More Resources FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON the various open-application offerings and enhancements, visit the following links: CLI FAQ: JDBC FAQ: iseries* Access for Windows* ODBC: jsp?topic=/rzaik/rzaikappodbc.htm JTOpen and the IBM* Toolbox for Java*: IBM Redbook Integrating DB2* Universal Database for iseries with Microsoft* ADO.NET : java/html/wwhelp.htm What Java Lite Brings to i5/os* IBM Systems Magazine, April 2006: A.S. eliminate extra calls to allocate CLI handles, improving query response time and increasing the throughput of their SQL requests. These environments typically have several users processing many unique SQL requests in parallel, which can cause CLI handle counts to get quite high. A CLI handle is a variable that refers to a data object allocated and managed by CLI. In V5R4, CLI has doubled the handle limit from 80,000 handles to 160,000 handles per CLI environment. Increasing the handle limit also allows for a greater degree of flexibility in these highly threaded environments and more SQL statements to stay open and easily accessible. Finally, an option that s been available for several releases, record-blocking, can provide a nice performance boost for many applications. This option is either implemented by default, as is the case with Toolbox and Native JDBC, or can be specified explicitly as is the case with ODBC and CLI. It allows the application to fetch or insert a block of data from or to the server on the first fetch or insert request, instead of making multiple calls to move the data. Client-side interfaces are especially ripe for this optimization since they re always running in a distributed environment flowing data back and forth over the network. Additionally, server-side interfaces can see noticeable benefits since the overhead of repeated calls to the DBMS is expensive. SQLExtendedFetch is the CLI API used to implement block fetching. In V5R4, the ability to block fetch was also added to the CLI SQLFetchScroll API. CLI now allows column-wise block fetches and inserts, in addition to row-wise. More information on column-wise binding can be found at the CLI FAQ. A good stepby-step example of these binding types can be found online ( v2r2/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.db2.doc.odbc/bjnemstr145.htm). Opening Doors The unique integration capabilities of the System i platform along with its powerful and robust database provide a great tool for businesses to implement the solutions they need. The support of these open-application interfaces continues to make the System i platform valuable and proves that when it comes to application development on the platform, the options are wide open. Andrew Sloma works in development for DB2 UDB for i5/os in Rochester, Minn. His responsibilities include development for the CLI and native JDBC interfaces. Andrew can be reached at ajsloma@us.ibm.com. evelogic The Systems Management Specialist.

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11 Working in a Collaborative Land What is IBM Workplace and how do I get it? BY KIM GREENE S till trying to figure out what IBM* Workplace* is? Or are you already interested and ready to install one of the Workplace products but aren t sure how to acquire the product? If you answered yes to either of these questions, you re in the right place. With the rebranding and renaming of products, we ve become somewhat disoriented when it comes to understanding what Workplace really is. It s simple actually; Workplace is a brand nothing more, nothing less. It s a family of products, much like IBM Tivoli* is a family of product offerings. Workplace is a set of components, compiled in different sets depending on the specific Workplace product you purchase. ILLUSTRATION BY ROBERT CRAWFORD Product Introductions The server-based products that are part of IBM Workplace include IBM WebSphere* Portal Express, IBM WebSphere Portal Enable, IBM Software Solution on Demand, Workplace Collaboration Services (WCS), Workplace Services Express (WSE), Lotus* Domino*, Lotus Document Manager, Sametime, Sametime Extranet and QuickPlace. Since the scope of this article is the Workplace-specific products, I ll only focus on WCS, WSE and the WebSphere Portal servers. Each of these products provides a different set of functionality. It s important to understand the level of functionality offered with each server so you purchase the correct one for the business problems you re planning to solve. AUGUST 2006 IBM SYSTEMS MAGAZINE, ASEAN/SA EDITION 59

12 WebSphere Portal server This server allows portal applications to be served up for end users to utilize. A portal interface provides users with a single point of entry for working with many applications. Rather than having disjointed applications open on the desktop, a portal environment provides a single end-user interface for users to access needed applications. A key benefit of this environment is the ability for the various portal applications to interface with each other. How many times have you taken information from one application and pasted it into another application? This isn t necessary when using IBM WebSphere portal to serve applications. The portal infrastructure allows information from one portlet on the end user s screen to automatically be passed to one or more portal applications. This can save time and reduce data input errors, ultimately helping companies save money. WCS This server environment is built on top of IBM WebSphere Portal server. WCS is strictly a collaborative environment, providing end users with the following functions: Calendaring and scheduling Address books Instant messaging and presence awareness Team spaces Document management Web conferencing Distance learning Web-content management I stated that WCS is a collaborative environment only. What does this really mean? It means you can utilize any of the collaborative features listed here, or you can use a number of portlets that provide functionality to collaborative-based applications. Or you can use composite applications. Composite applications are sets of portlets deployed on the same page that allow more functionality than when working with an individual portlet. Many collaboration portlets ship with the WCS server too many to list here. A few examples: Chat Room Chat room for groups Discussion Threaded discussion forum for teams Sales Team Tools to coordinate sales activities Team Project A team space that includes team tasks, a team calendar, discussions, a chat room and documentmanagement capabilities As mentioned above, in addition to the composite applications, you also have the functionality of individual portlets that you can access within a WCS server. Some include: People Finder Search either your personal address book or the LDAP directory to find colleagues Instant Contacts Add buddies to your instant messaging contacts lists; as with the People Finder, either your personal address book or the LDAP directory can be searched Bookmarks Keep track of your favorite links Minutes Store meeting minutes Announcements Provide announcements to all employees or certain groups of employees Survey Conduct surveys regarding different projects, new ideas, existing products, etc. WSE Similar to WCS, WSE is built on top of IBM WebSphere Portal Server, however its services are somewhat different. The biggest differences for WSE in comparison to WCS are: WSE offers a subset of the collaborative features provided by WCS. WSE provides not only access to collaboration portlets, but also allows you to run non-collaboration portlets. WSE provides a full license to IBM WebSphere Portal Server, so not only can you access non-collaboration portlets within WSE, but you can also develop your own portlets or composite applications and deploy them within a WSE server. The functions included in WSE are instant messaging and presence awareness, team spaces and document management. Many portlets that ship with the product allow you to integrate with collaborative and non-collaborative applications. For example, you can use the mail portlet to include your existing in the portal experience end users get with WSE. This applies to Lotus Domino, but also Microsoft* Exchange servers or any IMAP or POP3 servers. In this case, users can continue to use their normal Lotus Notes* or Microsoft Outlook client to access their , calendar, or address book, or they can access their and such from the WSE end-user portal interface. Like WCS, the number of portlets that ship with the product is quite impressive. Because you have a full portal license, you can include collaborative and non-collaborative portlets in your user s WSE experience. One of the most commonly used noncollaborative portlets is the IBM iseries* Access for Web portlet, which allows users to access the following through the WSE portal interface: 5250 hardware-based commands and applications Database tables and dynamic SQL queries IFS Printer output and spooled files With WSE, you can develop your own composite applications or portlets and serve those up through your WSE server. The Business Benefits of WSE and WCS The benefits to using either WSE or WCS products include: Built-in portal interface Many portlets shipped with the products Reduced development and maintenance costs Portability of applications and user experience Central storage of documents and information One of the benefits you get is a built-in portal interface. This means that end users can access many or all of the applications they work with from one interface. 10 AUGUST 2006 IBM SYSTEMS MAGAZINE, ASEAN/SA EDITION

13 Another advantage of both products is the wealth of portlets that ship with the product. The portlets range in function from providing group chat rooms to document search capabilities. By using the portlets that ship with the products, you not only save time on development of applications, but also the cost to maintain those applications. The portlets that ship with the products often fill most companies needs. If there are portlets you need that aren t shipped with the products, you can either develop your own or purchase them from the Workplace solutions catalog ( If you have the WCS product, you must purchase the IBM WebSphere Portal Server separately to develop and/or deploy custom portlets. Another benefit of using both WSE and WCS is the application environment s portability. Users can log in from any Internet connection and access the applications they use with the same user experience. Alternatively, you can purchase just the specific components you want to utilize. For example, if you plan to only use the collaborative-learning or the Web-content management pieces of WCS, you can purchase only those components. Another benefit of the component-based licensing for WCS is that as usage of the product grows, additional components can be purchased. The individual components of WCS that can be purchased include: Workplace Collaborative Learning, Workplace Documents, Workplace Messaging, Workplace Team Collaboration and Workplace Web Content Management. Pricing for the individual components of WCS are user-based licensing. This is an added benefit of purchasing the individual components of WCS you have the option of user-based licensing. This means you pay for the number of licenses you plan to utilize for each component purchased. There s one more option for WCS licensing. For customers who are using WCS and want to also use the services of a Portal By using the portlets that ship with the products, you not only save time on development of applications, but also the cost to maintain those applications. A general benefit of both WCS and WSE is the central storage of documents and information on a server. Normally documents and other useful information are stored on PCs and laptops where this information is inaccessible to others. When documents and information are stored on PCs or laptops, there s greater risk of crashing and permanently losing this information or having the documents stolen when a laptop is lifted from an employee. Having the documents and information locked down on the server makes them more secure and less likely to fall into the wrong hands. For more on utilizing the document-management capabilities of WSE and WCS, see the article, Meet Workplace Document Management on page 14. Getting the Goods Now that you understand what the IBM Workplace server products are, how do you get them? Workplace products can be purchased or acquired in many ways. They can be purchased separately or as part of a System i* processor package. IBM WebSphere Portal Server has a per-processor license charge. You pay a flat rate for each additional processor you want to activate for Portal Server usage. The WSE product has two licensing formats: processorbased or user-based. Depending on the number of users you want to deploy WSE functionality to, you can choose the pricing model that works best for your company. WCS licensing is processor-based only. WCS has a different type of licensing flexibility. When you purchase a processorbased license for WCS, you get all of the components of WCS. Server, they can purchase the Software Solution for On Demand Workplace (SSODW) solution, which gives them the ability to deploy non-wcs portlets within their WCS server environment. SSODW is a per-user pricing option for customers who want the full range of WCS plus Portal Server. WCS customers also have the option of purchasing a per-processor Portal Server license. Do You Have One of the Extend Software Packages? An extend software package is a software license solution that allows you to purchase specific functions of the core IBM WebSphere Portal Server product. For example, the base license for IBM WebSphere Portal Server provides a plethora of functionality. Not all customers need the full set of this functionality, therefore there are extend software package that allow those customers to purchase different portions of the core IBM WebSphere Portal Server at a reduced price, while providing the portal services they require within their applications. The extend software packages apply only to the IBM WebSphere Portal product and aren t related to the WCS and WSE products. I ll cover the extend software packages so you understand what they offer. I ll also cover the processor packages that relate to purchasing WSE and WCS. (Note: Extend 5.1 isn t offered on the System i platform.) Portal Enable x This portal software package provides you with an IBM WebSphere Portal Server that can be used to host portal applications. You also get the development tools for writing your own portlets to deploy within the Portal server. When you install the IBM WebSphere Portal Server with this package, a WebSphere Application Server (WAS) is installed to AUGUST 2006 IBM SYSTEMS MAGAZINE, ASEAN/SA EDITION 11

14 support the portal server. You can t use this WAS server to serve Web applications; it s only available to support the portal server functionality. Additionally, you get a document manager within the portal server. This document manager is the same functionality you get within WCS and WSE. The Portal Enable 5.1 software package also provides Domino Extended Product Portlets (DEPP), which includes: 1. My Lotus Team Workplaces portlet Provides a portal interface into a Lotus Quickplace server 2. Lotus Web Conferencing portlet A portal interface into the instant messaging and Web-conferencing functionality of a Sametime server 3. People Finder portlet Allows you to search an LDAP directory server such as Lotus Domino or the IBM Directory Server to view information about a person (Note: Licensing for the underlying Quickplace and Sametime servers required to provide the functionality of the portlets provided with DEPP aren t included in the Portal Enable 5.1 software package. A Lotus Domino, Quickplace and Sametime server license must be purchased in addition to the Portal Enable 5.1 software package to utilize these portlets.) Portal Express Plus x This software offering provides the following servers: Lotus Domino, Quickplace and Sametime to be used for both instant messaging and Web conferencing. It s important to understand that these products licenses are single server only. This means that you can t have a highavailability (HA) solution or network-deployment solution with this software offering. You do, however, have the ability to configure multiple Domino servers on a single System i platform with this software solution. The Portal Express Plus software package is being replaced by WSE. An end-of-life date for the Portal Express Plus software package is expected to be announced soon. Portal Express x The Portal Express software provides a WAS server and an IBM WebSphere Portal Server. The WAS server is required to provide portal server services, but can be used outside of the portal server. This means you can configure a separate WAS server to act as a Web server. Because you have a full portal server license, you also get the portal development tools that allow you to develop your own portal applications to be deployed on the IBM WebSphere Portal Server. As with the Portal Enable 5.1 software package, you also get a document manager and the DEPP. WCS and WSE Licensing Let s cover both special editions of System i models along with licensing of the software products by themselves. You can acquire the products by purchasing the software specifically or by purchasing a special solution edition of System i hardware that grants you licenses of the products. Many different processor models are designed to offer competitive pricing solutions for the Workplace products. Details on each of these processor model edition packages follow. Enterprise Edition The Enterprise Edition processors are special-features codes you can purchase that provide a certain number of WSE licenses. The breakdown in the number of WSE licenses by processor model group is: Model licenses of WSE Model licenses of WSE Model licenses of WSE Model licenses of WSE Remember that you get unlimited interactive processing with the Enterprise Edition processor models as well. You can purchase additional WSE licenses for each of these processor models if you have the capacity to support additional users. WSE user licenses come in 20 user increments. (Note: WSE replaces WebSphere Portal Express in Enterprise Edition. With WebSphere Portal Express within Enterprise Edition, you were given 20 licenses of WebSphere Portal Express. With the WSE replacement of this licensing, you now get 20 licenses of WSE. Also, because WSE provides a full license to the portal server, you get 20 licenses of WebSphere Portal Server.) Details on the processor edition models can be found online ( v5r3.html). Details for each of the specific processor models can be found by clicking on the links near the top of the page. Solution Edition This processor offers a package of WSE licenses. With the Model 550, you get 40 licenses of WSE. As with the Enterprise Edition, you can purchase additional licenses of WSE in 20-user increments. Before purchasing the additional licenses, do the appropriate capacity planning to make sure the additional users can be supported. Workplace Edition The Workplace Edition is the same feature code as the Domino Edition. This is a competitively priced offering for customers who want to run either the WCS or WSE software offering. The default system that s shipped is a way. Two additional processors can be activated if required. You ll need to purchase licenses for the two additional processors when/if you choose to activate them. The Workplace Edition is a competitive hardware offering. You need to purchase your Lotus Domino, WCS or WSE software licenses separately. Alternatively, if you ve already purchased one of these products, you can transfer those existing licenses to this hardware offering. More details can be found about the Workplace Edition at the IBM ^ iseries Workplace Edition Web site ( com/servers/eserver/iseries/software/workplace/edition.html). Collaboration Edition The Collaboration Edition is a new hardware offering that s very similar to the Workplace Edition. The difference is that the Collaboration Edition applies to the System i This solution is targeted toward small and medium businesses (SMBs). Because the Collaboration Edition 12 AUGUST 2006 IBM SYSTEMS MAGAZINE, ASEAN/SA EDITION

15 targets true SMB customers, it s a competitive hardware solution compared to other competitors such as Dell, xseries* and other Windows servers. The base Collaboration Edition is a 520 that ships as a 1- way. The processor can be upgraded to a 2-way if the growth is required. Like the Workplace Edition, you can either transfer your existing software licenses to this solution or purchase the software licenses. More details on the Collaboration Edition can be found online ( 520collaboration/index.html). Additional Licensing Options In addition to purchasing the WSE or WCS products through one of the processor-model editions, you can purchase the products separately. If you choose this option, be aware of some additional licensing offerings. Sub-capacity licensing allows additional flexibility in the licensing of WCS and is available for Workplace Collaboration Services 2.6. This licensing structure allows you to purchase license entitlements for the processors assigned to the LPAR where WCS is running. only charged for the two processor licenses rather than the full 12 in this case. Sub-capacity licensing doesn t apply to WSE since this product has not only processor-based licensing, but also userbased licensing. With the user-based licensing, end-user licenses can be purchased in 20-user increments. The userbased pricing provides an optional licensing structure for WSE so sub-capacity pricing isn t necessary for that solution. Both WCS and WSE support Capacity Upgrade on Demand (CUoD), which is the ability to activate additional processors once you ve determined you need the extra processing power. This is a great option for many customers, for example, as they may only need a 2-way when they place the order for their system, but will eventually need the processing capability of a 4-way. CUoD helps keep the initial system cost down and provides the flexibility of adding processors once they re needed, saving the customer the time and hassle of having to purchase a new system and then moving all of their applications and data to the new system. With CUoD, WCS and WSE customers must purchase the number of licenses as appropriate for the quantity of processors being activated. One of the biggest benefits to System i customers running a WCS or WSE solution is that you don t have to purchase any DB2 UDB licenses. With the processing power of many of the System i processor models, sub-capacity licensing is a very attractive licensing structure for WCS. If you have a 12-way processor and have LPARed the system so that you only have two of the processors dedicated to providing WCS services, you only need to pay for the two WCS license entitlements. Sub-capacity pricing of the two processors in an LPAR is only available as a special bid. If you have this requirement, make sure your hardware representative puts in a special bid to ensure you re More Answers Additional resources you may find helpful are located in the IBM* Workplace* on System i* frequently-asked-questions area: faqspkg.html faqs.html Latest information on which releases of Workplace products are supported on the different versions of the System i operating system: workplace/support.html#wcs26 K.G. Big Benefits One of the biggest benefits to System i customers running a WCS or WSE solution is that you don t have to purchase any DB2* Universal Database* (UDB) licenses. System i customers get a full license to DB2 UDB. Other platforms don t share this benefit; they get a restricted license of DB2 UDB when they purchase WCS or WSE and are only able to use DB2 UDB as a datastore for those products. If they want to use DB2 UDB for any other applications, they must purchase a full license of DB2 UDB. Another feature unique to the System i platform relates to WAS. When you purchase either a WCS or WSE server, you get an unrestricted-use license to WAS Express for deploying your own Web applications. This isn t offered with other platforms. Other platforms provide WAS Base as a restricted-use license for WAS, meaning that WAS can only be used to run WCS and WSE applications. The System i OS/400* bundling includes a license to use WAS Express. The WAS Express license allows customers to deploy their own Web applications. This means iseries customers aren t impacted by the license restriction because they are entitled to use WAS Express for deployment of their Web applications. (continued on page 23) AUGUST 2006 IBM SYSTEMS MAGAZINE, ASEAN/SA EDITION 13

16 Workplace simplifies document-library management Meet Workplace Document Management BY AMY HOERLE Can IBM* Workplace* Services Express or Workplace Collaboration Services manage documents? Do I still need licenses to Microsoft* Office if I use Workplace Collaboration Services or Workplace Services Express? What is a document library? Do you need to use a browser to access a document library in Workplace? By becoming familiar with Workplace Services Express and Workplace Collaboration Services version 2.5 document management, you ll arrive at answers to these questions. You may be asking, Is there a difference between Workplace Services Express and Workplace Collaboration Services? Yes, there is. The two products offer somewhat different features and functions, however there s no difference when referring to the document-management functionality in these two products. In this article I ll refer to Workplace Collaboration Services and Workplace Services Express as Workplace. (Note: The screen captures in this article were taken from a Workplace Services Express version server.) ILLUSTRATION BY VICTORIA KANN 14 AUGUST 2006 IBM SYSTEMS MAGAZINE, ASEAN/SA EDITION

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18 Figure 1 Why Document Management? Unless you have a desktop backup solution in place, you most likely have valuable documents unsecured and vulnerable to loss in the event of a workstation failure. By using a Workplace document library, you can have all of your documents stored in one place, back them up and secure sensitive documents. (Note: At this time, the backup and recovery options are limited to the entire Workplace server, but this will change with future releases of the Workplace space rather than a document library, the document library fundamentals are the same between a stand-alone document library and a document library that s part of a team space. If you ve decided you want a document library rather than a team space, let s get started. By default, all Workplace users have the ability to create their own document library. Any new document library is owned by the user who created it. Initially, only the owner and the Workplace administrator have authority over the document library. However, the creator may then assign a new owner, give additional people manager authority to the document library or allow others to contribute to the library by making them editors. I ll explain how to modify the document library s security later in this article. In Figure 1, you can see that Jane Doe created and thus owns the library named Jane s Documents. You also see two additional document libraries HR Reference Documents and Sales. There are more document libraries on this Workplace server, but Jane only has authority to HR Reference Documents, Jane s Documents and Sales. In Workplace, a user can only see or search for document libraries to which they re authorized. By using a Workplace document library, you can have all of your documents stored in one place, back them up and secure sensitive documents. products.) Also, Workplace includes document versioning as well as providing a place for commenting on a document for easy review and collaboration. This eliminates the issue of each user maintaining multiple copies of documents and cluttering their hard-disk drive. Finally, since all of the documents are stored in one place, you can easily share, search and locate documents. Now that you re convinced you need a document library, how do you get started? Assuming you ve already installed and configured Workplace, the default home page of Workplace includes four tabs Welcome, Mail, Team Spaces and Search (see Figure 1, above). If you select the Team Spaces tab, you have three choices Team Spaces, Applications and Documents. Selecting Documents will allow a Workplace user to create a new document library or work with an existing document library. You may be wondering why Documents are found under Team Spaces. This can be explained simply by saying that a document library is automatically created as part of most team spaces. So why would you want a document library versus a team space? A team space can optionally provide additional functions such as a group calendar, chat room or frequently asked questions. If you decide you need a team Once you ve viewed the list of available document libraries, you can begin to work with the library by clicking on the name of the document library. In Figure 2 (below), the Sales document library is open. When you open the library, you ll see any folders or published documents in the library. The left frame holds the three default folders that include All Documents, Pending Drafts and Locked Documents. In the right frame, you can see the list of folders along with all of the published documents. If you don t see what you re looking for, Workplace provides searching capabilities. You can search for a document based on title, content, author or description. Figure 2 16 AUGUST 2006 IBM SYSTEMS MAGAZINE, ASEAN/SA EDITION

19 Figure 3 A document inside a library may be in one of the following states: private draft, published or locked. When a document is created and saved for the first time, the user has the option of publishing the document or saving it as a private draft. By saving the document as a private draft, only the creator of the document can see or edit it. A published document can be accessed by all users as soon as the document library is opened. Workplace includes a locking feature that prevents all other users from editing the document, although other users can still view, copy or download a locked document. Also, in the case where the user holding the lock decides to leave the office without unlocking the document, another document library user with editor authority or above can forcefully unlock the document. Once the document is created, a user can notify a colleague about the new document by sending a link to it. However, this functionality isn t configured by default and is beyond the scope of this article. For information on configuring your Workplace server to send document links, refer to the The More You Know sidebar (page 19). Management Functions Storing documents is great, but to effectively manage documents, you may also need the ability to comment on a document or create multiple versions of it. Workplace provides this functionality. Once a document has been published and opened, you ll see the document, as well as options to comment on the document or create a new version of it (see Figure 3, above). Once a new version of a document has been created, the users will always see the most current version when opening the document. To review old versions, click on the Versions link to see a list of all document versions. Once you find the version you want, open the document and you ll see a screen similar to Figure 3. If you choose to click on the Comment link, all comments on the documents will be displayed in a manner similar to a group discussion or message board. In Figure 3, you ll notice that when accessing a document via Workplace, the document is automatically converted to HTML and displayed in the browser. This conversion service eliminates the need for any additional client-side software for viewing documents. This conversion service only supports the following document types: text and word-processor documents, presentation documents, spreadsheets, PDF files, image files such as JPEG or GIF files, and HTML files. You can store additional document types; however you can t view them within the browser. Workplace also has three built-in document editors a rich-text editor, spreadsheet editor and presentation editor. These options allow users without Microsoft Office to edit documents created in Word, Excel or PowerPoint, or create new documents. While these editors don t contain all of the features found in the Microsoft Office portfolio, they re sufficient for casual users. With these editors, you may find that you no longer need to pay for as many Microsoft Office licenses. What if you ve made a significant investment in the Microsoft Office family? Maybe you want to be able to integrate with Workplace to have a central repository and use some of the other Workplace features such as document locking and versioning. Workplace has an answer for you. You can launch any of the Microsoft Office products directly from the browser, or you can install the desktop components for document libraries. The desktop components allow you to integrate a Workplace document library into Windows* Explorer and the Microsoft Office suite of products. You can install the desktop components from any document library. If you refer back to Figure 1, you ll see a Tools menu. Under the Tools menu, there s only one option Install Desktop Components. Once you ve installed the desktop components, you have two options. One is to use the File menu within Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint. In the File menu there s a new option, Document Library. From the Document Library menu you can add a document to the library or open a document already in the library. You can also choose to save a document as a draft or publish it. Alternatively, you can access the document library from Windows Explorer. Figure 4 AUGUST 2006 IBM SYSTEMS MAGAZINE, ASEAN/SA EDITION 17

20 Figure 5 If you choose to access a Workplace document library after the desktop components have been installed, you ll see a new option under My Computer, Document Manager (see Figure 4, page 17). Initially, the only visible Workplace library is the one you had open when you selected to install the desktop components. You can easily access another library if needed. To do so, right-click on the Workplace server name and select Add Library. In Figure 4, you ll see both libraries that Jane has access to edit are selected (Jane s Documents and Sales). You can also see all of the documents contained within the Sales library. These are the same documents as in Figure 2. From this view, you can open the document and edit as if it were stored locally. You can also easily add new documents to the library by dragging and dropping them into the library. The last piece of the desktop components is the Document Manager Upload Monitor. If you ve installed the desktop components, you ll notice the document manager icon in the Windows system tray. Double-click on the icon, and you ll see the status of all upload requests to the Workplace server. If you prefer not to run the upload monitor, you can choose to end the upload monitor; the icon will disappear from the Windows system tray. You can still use all of the document manager functions without the upload monitor, but it will now be your responsibility to ensure all documents were successfully uploaded to the Workplace server. document library and edit documents stored within the library. A manager can contribute to the document library, edit documents stored within the library and manage access to the document library. To modify the membership or security of a document library, you must first open the document library (see Figure 2) and choose the Members option in the lefthand frame. The Members page allows you to add or remove members of the document library. Here you can also see if the document library is available for all users or only those in the member list (see Figure 5, left). To add a user, select the Actions menu option of Add Members. Next, select the user and it s added as an editor. (Note: If you don t have manager authority to the document library, the only action available to you is cancellation of your membership to the document library.) If you need to modify the authority of an existing member, for example promote an editor to manager, select the Actions menu option of Manage Members. Then, you can add, remove or reassign users in either the manager or editor role. The members interface within Workplace is easy to use, but what if you need additional granularity? Maybe you need to assign all people in your organization read-only authority to all documents in a document library. Maybe you want to secure specific documents within a document library. Both of these scenarios are possible using the Resource Permissions portlet. Necessary Security Changes In the first aforementioned scenario, we want to allow all Workplace users read authority to all documents in a document library. I did this on my server using a document library named HR Reference Documents. To complete this scenario, the first step is to make all users members of the document library. As you recall, you do this from the Members interface in Workplace as shown in Figure 5. From here, choose the Action Figure 6 Security Concerns The desktop components are great, but they have one limitation: security. From the desktop components you can t add users as managers or editors to the library or secure a specific document. You must do this from Workplace. Only two security levels can be applied to a document library via the Workplace interface: Manager and Editor. Additional security is available via the Resource Permissions portlet, which I ll explain later. An editor can contribute to the 18 AUGUST 2006 IBM SYSTEMS MAGAZINE, ASEAN/SA EDITION

21 By default, all Workplace users have the ability to create their own document library. menu option of Give All Users Access as: Editors. If you don t add the users as members in this manner, they won t be able to see the document library. Once this step is complete, return to the document library in Workplace by selecting Document Library on the left side of the screen. This should return you to your previous view of the document library. Your screen should look similar to Figure 2. You can now begin to secure your Document Library folders and documents. Assuming we want all users to have read-only access to everything in this document library, select the folder that represents it. This is the folder with the same name as our document library. Select the Folder Actions menu option of Set Access to this folder. This brings up the Resource Permissions windows as shown in Figure 6 (opposite page). In the Resource Permissions window, the first column contains the different roles a user may have, including user, editor and manager. The second column allows for propagation of authority to child objects. In this scenario, child objects are all of the folders and documents in the document library. The third column defines whether to inherit authority from a parent object. In our case, the parent object is the actual document library. Finally, the last column The More You Know For additional information regarding installation, configuration, and backup and recovery options for IBM* Workplace* on the System i* platform, refer to these resources: Deploying IBM Workplace Services Express on the IBM iseries* Server: sg html?open Deploying IBM Workplace Collaboration Services on the IBM iseries Server: sg html?open Workplace Collaboration Services 2.6 Information Center: index.jsp?toc=/com.ibm.wcs26.ic.doc/toc.xml Workplace Services Express 2.6 Information Center: IBM Workplace Services Express for Dummies, Limited Edition: nsf/wdocs/wsefd A.H. includes an icon to edit the role and assign users and groups to a specific role. In my tests, I removed the checks under the inheritance column where allowed. I then used the edit icon to modify the editor role. Next, I removed all users from the editor role. Finally, I used the edit icon to modify the user role and added the group named all authenticated portal users. At this point, all other Workplace users could see the HR Reference Documents library and read any document in the library. The only users who still had authority to edit or delete documents in the library were those that I defined as managers; I didn t edit the manager role. Remember, once users become a member of a document library, they have the authority to view or edit any published document. To exclude document library members from a document, use the Resource Permissions portlet. To access these options for a single document, follow these steps: 1. Open the document as demonstrated previously (see Figure 3). 2. Within the document, select the More Actions menu option of Set Access. The Set Access option opens a window that looks like Figure Choose which role you want to modify and which users you want to add or remove by clicking the edit role icon. Formal Introductions This completes the investigation into Workplace document libraries. You were introduced to the available functions and how to use them. You were also introduced to the Workplace Document Manager Desktop Components. Through the desktop components, you ve learned that in order to use a document library in Workplace, a user must have authority to Workplace, but they don t need a browser to access it. I hope this introduction has helped you understand not only the purpose of document libraries in Workplace, but also how to use them. Amy Hoerle started working for the Lotus* Support Center in 1998 providing support for Domino* running on i5/os*. Amy can be reached at ahoerle@us.ibm.com. AUGUST 2006 IBM SYSTEMS MAGAZINE, ASEAN/SA EDITION 19

22 Spotlight Insider s software critique Taking Some Pain Out of IT Auditing BY DON RIMA One of the items at the top of my IT Things I Hate To Do list is dealing with auditors. Add to this list the major-league annoyances that things like Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) have added to our already-packed lives and you get the picture. Is there any relief in sight? From the auditing standpoint, my gut tells me it s going to get worse. But, from an IT standpoint, some of the tools vendors are getting smart and helping fill that niche requirement with some nice things to work with. This month, I examine Tango/04 Data Monitor from Tango/04 ( Installation If you want an effective lesson on how to do a product installation, study how Tango/04 does it. It amazes me how many vendors still require users to manually FTP save files to the IBM* System i* platform and do things manually. With Tango/04, it s all done very seamlessly and with a minimal user intervention for things that install programs should be handling. Very smooth installation. There s setup and configuration after installation. Part of it s done via a 5250 interface and part via the desktop-based GUI. Mine was sent via two FTPs from the Tango/04 Web site, and installation couldn t have been easier. As part of your installation procedure, I recommend you allocate the time for a Webex walkthrough. It s time well spent, and you ll be producing versus learning that much faster. It would be nice for those who don t use journaling to have the ability to just do en mass journaling of the physical files in a library, but alas, you must select them one by one. And there are a lot of folks out there who don t do journaling. Ease of Use The product is incredibly easy to use. The GUI side is Spotlight Profile Product: Tango/04 Data Monitor Company: Tango/04 Version: 2.0 URL: Overall Rating: very easy to use. This isn t an overly complex product, but it has its way of doing things. It would be nice if you could do some of the 5250-side functions from the GUI, but that s life currently. The user interface is the desktop GUI, and the system side for setup is on the 5250 green-screen menus. It would be nice if it were all consolidated in one area similar to Ops Nav. Documentation Documentation is adequate, but after the Webex walk-through, you probably won t look at it much. Certifiability Everything I played with seemed to work as advertised. Functionality/Usefulness OK, I m going to presume you know what an audit is. I m going to presume you ve heard of SOX and the other reporting/auditing banes that life has created for us. Also, I m going to presume you have an occasional need to track what data is being viewed, added or modified by either users or programming functions and that you need this to be technically and legally sound. Tango/04 Data Monitor is part of a suite of products from Tango/04 that does a nice job of journal-file content analysis. In journals, we can track the before-and-after images of a file record. (If you don t know what journaling is, I suggest you 20 AUGUST 2006 IBM SYSTEMS MAGAZINE, ASEAN/SA EDITION

23 The Rima Report Category Points Weighting Overall Score Certifiability Installation Ease of Use Documentation Functionality Usefulness Support Total KICK THE TIRES: This was one of the handiest little niche products I ve seen in awhile. Simple and delivers a lot of useful information. (Points given are on a scale of 0 to 4, with 4 being the highest. Each category is assigned its own weighting from the total of 100 percent.) ILLUSTRATION BY RICHARD CLARK check it out next time you re at an IBM System i tech conference or user-group meeting). Through this analysis, you can tell what was changed, when, where and by whom. Typical issues have been the lack of ease in terms of turning journals into useable information in a timely manner. Tango/04 has a solution in their suite of monitor products that does this nicely. And, it s as current and complete as your System i journal is. Once the initial setup is completed on your 5250 screens, all of the reporting, data selection, etc., are done via the client module. The reports are color coded nicely to show the type of actions being performed on the data (add, read, change and delete). The changed fields are clearly noted for ease of tracking and analysis, and you can export the report data into several formats for flexibility. This is a tool that you can use internally or hand off to a qualified auditor and let them roll their own inquisitions into what s happening in your system s data. You can either use the nice and flexible front-end screen for data selection/mining or write your own SQL statements if you want to get more complex. And for tracking data changes internally or for program debugging, it s a nice tool to have. Support Support is handled by some nice folks in Argentina. Language wasn t an issue; However, answering the phone and product knowledge were. During my first call, I was directed to leave a message for a call back. The second time, I took a different menu-option selection and was routed internally to a live body. When I got a live body, he was very pleasant and courteous, but obviously new to the product and the System i platform. But, after a call to his level-2, I got a timely call back and a quick Webex that answered my questions. There s a learning curve going on here, but some nice folks to work with. What I d Like to See in the Next Release Report options available with mouse right-click versus dropdowns All configurational functionality available via the GUI interface An *AVAIL option on the data-gathering reload menus Allow mass journaling to be started versus file-by-file in a library Summary This is a nice niche product and I like it. Not only does it help keep the auditors at bay, but it s also nice from an internal standpoint to help track when a user creates a data issue, be it accidental or otherwise. Clearly, this is a clean and easy-touse tool for general audit functions, as well as for security and even program-testing functions. Don Rima has more than 20 years of experience with IBM midrange systems. For the past 10 years, he has owned a consulting group. Don can be reached at dr2@dlr2.net. AUGUST 2006 IBM SYSTEMS MAGAZINE, ASEAN/SA EDITION 21

24 Customer s Testimonial A look at customers success and achievements Aviva Thailand Consolidates with IBM to Enhance Efficiency Synopsis: Leading insurance company in Thailand reduces its annual hardware and software maintenance fees by 60 percent and increases its ability to manage month-end spikes when it consolidates its server environment onto an IBM System i 550 system that leverages IBM Capacity on Demand capabilities. Location: Thailand Industry: Insurance URL: CUSTOMER BACKGROUND For more than 116 years, Aviva Insurance Co., Ltd. (Aviva) has been a leading insurance company in Thailand. With a complete range of insurance products including auto, personal accident, homeowners, travel and health policies, Aviva collects annual premiums in excess of THB2 billion. The company's 12 Thailand branches employ more than 350 personnel. Aviva is also a major shareholder in Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co. Ltd., a Japanbased insurance provider with worldwide operations. BUSINESS NEED In the competitive insurance market, excellent customer service is a key differentiator, as customers place a high value on fast service delivery and service integrity. For the past 20 years, Aviva has been recognized as a pioneer in the insurance industry for leveraging information technology (IT) to improve customer service and modernize its offerings. To further enhance its business efficiency and improve its speed of customer services, Aviva needed to consolidate its server environment. Previously, it employed two servers - an IBM System i 720 system, which it used for its Polixy insurance application, and an IBM System i 820 system, which it used for its database and Web applications. While the client was pleased with the performance of its iseries environment, it needed to better utilize its server resources. The company also "We continually invest in our IT systems and IBM has always been our trusted partner since we installed our first IBM machine, the System/360 (eserver zseries), 17 years ago. We have also relied on IBM AS/400 and IBM iseries, the precursors to the iseries, for a number of years. It gave us enormous confidence that the IBM System i 550 platform was the logical choice. With the new IBM solution, we are well-positioned to further improve our customer relations with a scalable, reliable architecture that also delivers low costs of ownership." Arnop Porndhiti, president, Aviva Insurance Co. Ltd. 22 AUGUST 2006 IBM SYSTEMS MAGAZINE, ASEAN/SA EDITION

25 needed to better manage its monthly spikes in demand. At the end of every month, Aviva sees a dramatic spike in batch processing jobs, and its server environment did not have the capabilities to efficiently manage the increased workload. SOLUTION With help from IBM and IBM Business Partner Metro System Corporation, Aviva consolidated its two older IBM System i servers onto a single IBM System i 550 system. The System i system, which runs the IBM i5/os operating system, features two logical partitions (LPARs). The first LPAR hosts production and development environments for the client's core insurance application, Polixy/400. The second LPAR runs the client's WebSphere application server and its database applications. Leveraging the iseries platform's dynamic LPAR functionality, the client can allocate resources between LPARs, ensuring that applications have the capacity they need when they need it. The new System i platform also allows the client to respond quickly to changing business requirements and efficiently manage month-end spikes. Using Capacity on Demand (CoD) capabilities, Aviva can add capacity on-the-fly to meet temporary spikes in workload, enabling it to process batch jobs more quickly than before. BENEFITS OF THE SOLUTION By consolidating its two older IBM System i servers onto a new IBM System i 550 server, Aviva will reduce its annual hardware and software maintenance fees by more than 60 percent. As it keeps its costs low, Aviva will also keep its premium rates low. The new server environment frees up extra floor space in the client's data center, giving the company the freedom to deploy hardware for different purposes. By leveraging IBM's resource utilization and CoD capabilities, Aviva can ensure that its batch processing jobs are completed in a timely and efficient manner. The client's commitment to quality services that are delivered quickly has made it a leader in the Thai insurance market. (from page 13) A benefit previously covered in the article is related to the license provided for WebSphere Portal Enable Server. WSE includes an unrestricted license for WebSphere Portal Enable Server. This is true on all platforms and means that the portal server can be used to develop and deploy portlets within WSE. If you still have green-screen applications, the iseries Access for Web portlets can be used to allow green-screen functionality within WSE. These portlets can t be used within WCS because the portal server license that comes with WCS only allows collaborative portlets to be served with the portal server. Because you have a full portal server license with WSE, you can serve up not only collaborative portlets, but also application portlets. This makes WSE a strong solution offering on the System i platform. Interfaces for Working with the Products WCS has both a browser interface and a rich-client interface called the IBM Workplace Managed Client (Managed Client). WSE has a browser-only interface. The benefits of using a browser are that there are no desktops to maintain, and it s easy to collaborate outside the firewall. Many benefits of using the Managed Client interface with WCS exist, including: Allowing users to take the entire portal environment offline. Lotus Notes users are familiar with this type of functionality with the replication feature. The offline experience allows users to work with their WCS environment even when they re disconnected from the Internet. Lotus Notes plug-in with a Notes 7 client to provide the same interface you get with a Notes client within the Managed Client when working with your Lotus Notes , calendar and address book. Activity Explorer. For those new to the Managed Client, the Activity Explorer piece is an incredible productivity enhancer. Activity Explorer provides the capability for teams to share documents, have discussion threads about those documents, see who s currently viewing a document and possibly choose to start a chat with that person. It s a collaboration environment where teams can use both ad-hoc types of functionality such as and instant messaging along with more formal tools such as shared workspaces. The Place for Understanding I hope you ve gained a greater understanding of what the IBM Workplace server product offerings are and the benefits of running them on the System i platform. You now know how to acquire the IBM Workplace server products and introduce them into your overall environment. Kim Greene is an IBM Systems Magazine, i5 Business Systems edition technical editor and an independent consultant specializing in Domino consulting, education and performance. Kim can be reached at kim@kimgreene.com. Author s note: Thanks to Mike Gordon, IBM Rochester, Minn., for providing information on the different hardware packages and licensing structures for the Workplace and Portal products. AUGUST 2006 IBM SYSTEMS MAGAZINE, ASEAN/SA EDITION 23

26 ENDPGM An eclectic take on the i5 world Business Brings Hope John Vanderwall s mission is teaching business basics in Kazakhstan and beyond BY NEIL TARDY The first thing they tell you in business school is that most ventures fail. But when John Vanderwall travels halfway across the world and stands in front of up to 500 people, all of them hungry for basic business information, he avoids saying any such thing. Vanderwall is part of a church group that s spreading the word the word being that the opportunity to succeed in business starts with little more than a single idea and some essential knowledge. Over the past 14 months, Vanderwall s group has traveled four times to Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. Vanderwall participated in three of those trips, and in June, he and his co-horts went to Ukraine. Three group members, including Vanderwall, have developed about 80 hours of business curriculum covering everything from developing a marketing plan to understanding business ethics to unlocking the mysteries of Microsoft* Word and Excel. So with all that, why not teach the first rule of Business 101? Vanderwall explains: We re not going to spend time talking about the failure rate of small business; we say, give it a try. The one thing we cement in their minds is, What s the worst-case scenario? You try, you fail. But have you learned anything? Could you do it better the next time? We teach people to learn from all the things that they do. It may take a couple tries, but stick with it, work hard at it and you ll be successful. That formula is working for Vanderwall. As CEO of the company he co-founded, SkyView Partners, the Seattle-based provider of security software and services for the IBM* System i*, Vanderwall firmly believes that business should be about more than profit. Once he began collaborating with two fellow entrepreneurs at his church, Bob Abbott and Mike Smay, Vanderwall started to see just how what he s learned in business could be put into practice helping others. Smay had previously been to Kazakhstan with a missions group. There, he discovered a business seminar hosted at a church in Almaty, the republic s largest city. Hundreds attended. When Vanderwall and Abbott heard his story, the three developed an initiative through their own church, Redmond, Wash.-based Overlake Christian Church, to support return trips to Kazakhstan. I always thought that business people were the money changers in life their role was to earn money so they could support charitable causes and noble professions like evangelism or medicine. But I ve realized that business people must be part of the actual on-the-field work as well, Vanderwall says. Business people need to go and give others hope for a better life. Vanderwall adds that he s seen hope spread during his journeys to Kazakhstan, a sparsely populated republic of 15 million where $300 a month is a decent salary but not nearly enough to get high-speed Internet access, which runs about $1,000 a month. (Not surprisingly, the few Kazakhs who are online use dial-up.) He points to the homeless woman who struggled to pay $2 to get into the seminar, but is now in business with an Italian firm and making close to $3,000 a month. Another attendee, a college student, now goes online at school to create and sell research materials to her classmates. The seminars consist of three days of instruction. Three full days: start at 9 a.m., finish at 8 p.m. Think of it as COMMON on steroids, with translators to connect the English-speaking instructors to their predominantly Russian-speaking audience. The final two hours of each day are devoted entirely to answering attendee questions. With the seminars established in Kazakhstan and additional U.S.-based business people now volunteering to lead them, Vanderwall and his team, who pay their own expenses, expect to continue their mission to different parts of the globe. They re currently considering invitations to India and Thailand. We go because we re kind of hooked on this idea of teaching people about business, he says. A lot of them don t have the confidence to stand up and speak for themselves. We tell them that we re just a bunch of guys who do business every day you can do this. Neil Tardy is a contributing writer to IBM Systems Magazine, i5 Business Systems edition. Neil can be reached at ntardy@msptechmedia.com. 24 AUGUST 2006 IBM SYSTEMS MAGAZINE, ASEAN/SA EDITION

27 i5 Business Systems ASEAN/SA EDITION For further information on our IBM Systems magazine ASEAN/SA, please contact the respective country representatives listed below: MALAYSIA AND SINGAPORE Alida Abdullah Phone: alida@my.ibm.com INDONESIA Vina Kasim Phone: vina@id.ibm.com INDIA Divyashri S Dholay Phone: didholay@in.ibm.com PHILIPPINES Carmina Marquez Phone: marquez@ph.ibm.com SRI LANKA Rukshan Almeida Phone: rukshana@sg.ibm.com THAILAND Kanyanee Sirimongkol Phone: cxskanya@th.ibm.com VIETNAM Nguyen Viet Hung Phone: hungnv@vn.ibm.com

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