GSE - Regional Conference Belgium-Luxemburg 2016

Well, two GSE posts in a row. Talking about some publicity. Here's the invite for the regional conference. After years of interchanging between Spa and Oostende, there's a different location and they also shifted one day forward having the conference on a Thursday. The subject looks promising :

To all GSE Installation and Prospective Members

It is our pleasure to announce the 35th Regional Conference which will be organised on Wednesday 20 and Thursday 21 April 2016 in Hotel Gosset in Groot-Bijgaarden.

The theme of this conference is REAL-TIME INSIGHT

Customers, experts and suppliers will bring papers such as
- Real-Time Insight in the Context of Cyber Security;
- Real-Time Insight in the Retail Business;
- Real-Time Insight in Banking;
- Real-Time Insight in Health Care;
- Real-Time Analytics on z;
- Real-Time Insight using cognitive Computing.

In a few weeks, you will receive a formal invitation with the final Conference Programme and a Registration form.

Please insert a note in your agenda for the evening of Wednesday 20 April (Reception and Country Dinner) and/or the full day of Thursday 21 April 2016 (Conference).

We will enjoy welcoming you at this unique event !

Upcoming GSE events in Belgium

Here are some GSE Working Group meetings for the upcoming months.

Summary

• Thursday February 25 - GSE Architecture Working Group
• Wednesday March 9 - z/OS Working Group
• Monday March 14 - GSE Large User Group
• Thursday March 17 - GSE DB2 Working Group

More details below.

Let's do them in sequential order and start with the GSE Architecture working Group on Thursday February 25, 2016. It takes place in the afternoon in the Sogeti Belgium office, with the theme “Intelligent Systems and Processes” and here's the agenda :

12:30 – 13:00 hrs. : Welcome Coffee offered by Sogeti Belgium
13:00 – 13:15 hrs. : GSE and the Theme of Today by Eric Ombelets, Chairman
13:15 – 14:00 hrs. : Cognitive Business Use Cases by Eric Michiels, IBM Belgium
14:00 – 14:45 hrs. : Smart Operational Decisions and Processes by Prof. Jan Vanthienen, K.U.Leuven
14:45 – 15:15 hrs. : Coffee Break offered by Sogeti Belgium
15:15 – 16:00 hrs. : Machine Intelligence by Erik Van Ommeren, Sogeti Labs
16:00 – 17:30 hrs. : Networking Cocktail offered by Sogeti Belgium

You can register over here.

In March we have the GSE z/OS working Group on Wednesday March 9, 2015. It's an all day event taking place at our own RealDolmen headquarters in Huizingen and the agenda is still to be determined. Registration vill be via the GSEbelux website.

Next in line is the GSE Large User Group meeting. This is on Monday afternoon March 14, 2016 at the  Colruyt Group Services offices in Huizingen (behind the RealDolmen offices). The subject is 'IT Security in practice' :

"What are the actual threats and what are the expectations for the future ? For what must we be prepared ? Previously, perimeter security was sufficient. Today we have to accept that  someone can still break in into our system.  How can we efficiently detect /monitor  that ? How to react on such an attack ?  How must you be organized ? Which professional roles / responsibilities must be defined in your company to be capable to react in a sufficient way ?"

The event starts at 1pm with the following speakers :Stefaan Van Daele (IBM)  - Senior Security Architect at the Global Security Competence Center and Simon Caus - Security Architect at KBC.

Registration via a mail to katleen.frisch@colruytgroup.com

And finally we have the GSE DB2 Working Group meeting. This is on Thursday March 17, 2016 at The KBC offices in Leuven. The general subject is DB2 System performance and Tuning. Here's the agenda :

13:00 – 13:30 : Registration
13:30 - 14:00 : ‘System Performance at BNPPBF’ - Eddy Tiels, BNPPBF
14:00 - 15:00 : ‘The A to Z of DB2 system performance’ - Phil Granger, BMC Software
15:00 – 15:30 : Coffee break
15:30 - 16:30 : ‘Analyzing performance using Statistics & Accounting reports’ - Cristian Molaro, MConsulting
16:30 – 17:20 : Panel discussion
17:20 – 17:30 : RFE (Bart Steegmans, IBM)
17:30 - 19:00 : Networking & Drinks sponsored by BMC Software

Registration and more information on the subject over here.

Upcoming GSE Working Group Meetings

You'll have a busy time this and next week if you want to attend each GSE Working Group Meeting and you'll have to be at two places at once as well. Since I'm on neutral territory I cannot allow myself to favour one or other meeting. Oh, what the heck, since Pieter Rogge from the Young Professionals Working Group asked it so gently, if you pick one, take the Young Professionals session. Don't be misguided by the name : it's open, and it's free for every one. Here's an overview of upcoming GSE meetings :

• Thursday December 5, 2013 : CICS Working Group Meeting at IBM Forum Brussels
  Topics covered : Mobile and CICS TS 5.1 by Peter Siddell (IBM Hursley), New feature packs for CICS TS 5.1 by Peter Siddell, User presentation - CICS Web Service Implementation at Colruyt by Lieven Haesaert (Colruyt) and Business Rules executing within a CICS JVM by Paul Carruthers (IBM Hursley)
  

• Wednesday December 11, 2013 : z/OS Working Group Meeting at RealDolmen Huizingen
  This is an all day event and topics are Euroclear mainframe disk migration to VMAX with FAST VP by Renaud Colin (EOC), Mainframe Cost Optimization by John Dormon (BMC), Why running ELS for Linux by Hendrik Desmedt (IRIS) and zAware by Jan Tits (IBM).
  Information and registration

• Wednesday December 11, 2013 : Architecture Working Group Meeting at Abis Leuven
  The session starts in the afternoon and covers Integrating Big Initiatives into Enterprise Data Architectures – the case of NoSQL by Kris Van Thillo (ABIS), Big Data for Big Pharma by Davy Suvee (Datablend), An Enterprise Big Data Platform by Falke van Onacker (IBM Belgium) and Disruptive Change by Semantic Technologies in Life Sciences by Hans Constandt (Ontoforce)
  Information and registration

• Friday December 13, 2013 : Enterprise Systems Security Working Group at IBM Forum Brussels
  A couple of topics that are covered : "During Years, we believed that the Mainframe was "Untouchable" for hacking tentatives. But are we protected for real attacks?
  We all have experiences with programs that harmed our Business because they were (accidentally?) put in Production, before a final go, despite all our Change Management Rules, supported by System Software. How can we block the execution of these modules?
  Digital Certificates became crucial in z/OS. But do we have the necessary skills to deploy them on an adequate way and are we ready for z/OS 2.1? "
  Information and registration 

• Friday December 13. 2013 : Young Professionals Working Group at Colruyt Halle on Retail&IT
  This is an all day event on Retail&IT, so no wonder Colruyt is hosting this. Topics covered are : Service management (ColruytGroup), Security in Retail (IBM), E-commerce & certification (BE-Commerce) and Logistic automations at Colruyt (ColruytGroup). This is a unique opportunity for students and young professionals to get a good overview of this sector and its relation with IT. A practical tip : for those familiar with Colruyt, don't go to Wilgenveld, it's at Hellebroek Kantoor.
  Information and registration, Twitter, Facebook

GSE Members: 15% discount for all IBM trainings and conferences in Belgium

Here's a short, but interesting, news on a reduction for IBM Trainings for GSE members.

There was a bit of confusion about this at the Regional Conference last week, but take a look at the GSE Belux site.

IBM offers "GSE members a 15 % discount for ALL European Technical Conferences, ALL IBM National as well as ALL IBM Training Courses". So "give this information to the responsible people in your company so you can benefit from this 15% discount".

You can find all information about this over here.

GSE z/OS Working Group Presentations and ITSO

Last week we had our last GSE z/OS Working Group meeting for 2010 at RealDolmen. You can now download the .pdfs of the presentations

• IBM Smart Analytics optimizer by hendrik de Smet
• Detecting Soft Failures Using z/OS PFA (Predictive Failure Analysis) by Jan Tits
• DS8800 by Jacques Glorieux
• Recent evolutions in mainframe related storage by Walter Casteels
• z10 and zEnterprise CPU Measurement Facility by Jean-Paul Goemaere

Also mentioned during the meeting were the upcoming ITSO sessions in December.

06/12/2010 - ITSOZ4BE
IBM zEnterprise System Technical Update
07/12/2010 - ITSOZ3BE
IBM zEnterprise Unified Resource Manager Overview
08/12/2010 - ITSOZ1BE
z/OS Version 1 Release 12 Technical Update
09/12/2010 - ITSOZ2BE
Parallel Sysplex Update and High Availability Topics
10/12/2010 - ITSOZ5BE
z/OS Networking Technologies Update

DB2 User Experiences : migrating to DB2 9

This was a couple of weeks ago, but since I've been out for about a week, I only had the chance to check for these presentations this week. I know it's all very interesting to hear all the details about DB2 10, but let's face it, a lot of people are still migrating or even starting to migrate to DB2 9. Why am I telling you this ? Well, on March 25, 2010 there was a GSE DB2 working group meeting here in Belgium with 4 customers presenting their experiences. So I must say I personally find these customer experiences about their migrations even more interesting than the new stuff.

So if you're also still in the migration process, do take a look at these presentations, you'll definitely learn something from them. And don't forget to also check out the Q&A presentation where Bart Steegmans (IBM) answered some questions from the audience.

And to end with something new : you'll see in the Q&A presentation that Bart confirms that people will be able to skip DB2 9 and migrate from DB2 V8 to DB2 10. But, and I quote : "Skip versions V5 to 7, V8 to 10, don’t get used to it" !

GSE Belux site

GSE Belux now has its own site : www.gsebelux.com, and I think it's nice to see all information about GSE Belux and its working groups gathered in one site. It will save you lots of searching once every group has abandoned its own little corner (site). The IMS & DB2 Working Group sets the example : all information about the steering committee, upcoming events and downloads from previous events are already there. When all others follow, this will be a great place to gather information.

And don't forget to check out the agenda of 'upcoming events' (hey, sounds familiar) at the upper right corner of the screen.

Nice initiative. So, just check it out !

GSE, z/OS and zPrime

About a week ago I attended the GSE z/OS working group meeting here in Belgium. The presentations are now available at the download page of the GSE z/OS website. This time the 'crowd-puller' definitely was P. Viebrock from Neon Software on zPrime. It was Pauls last presentation before returning to the States as he had been touring through Europe to present zPrime. It was my first real presentation I had on zPrime and it also shed some light on how it works. No explicit details, though. You can find that presentation as well on the GSE z/OS site, so I won't go into any details.

Are there any new evolutions on zPrime ? Apparantly customers are going into production with it and they actually seem to pay less. Here's a recent update on IBMs reaction to a customer using zPrime who ordered additional specialty engines. Of course it's up to every individual customer to decide whether to proceed with this or not.

BT : GSE Working Group events

For those not familiar with the blog. I use 'BT' for 'Belgian Topic' similar to e.g. 'OT' which is often used for 'Off Topic'.

As you can see on the logo Guide Share Europe (GSE) turns 50 in 2009. Or as we read on the GSE site

"In 1959, it was recognized by a small group of representatives from European companies using IBM equipment that the exchange of experiences and strategies, based on the various IBM uses, between members of similar business sectors, was of immeasurable advantage to the IBM user community.
The European organization of G.U.I.D.E. was formed and is still going strong 50 years later as GUIDE SHARE EUROPE (GSE)"

So I thought I might already give you an update on known dates for GSE Working Group Events. It's not a complete list yet, but the rest will follow in the agenda.

GSE z/OS Group : 18/03/2009, 17/06/2009, 16/09/2009 and 18/11/2009
GSE Storage Management Group : 12/03/2009 and 16/09/2009 (possible joint event with z/OS group)
GSE Enterprise Systems Security Group : 11/03/2009 (z/OS), 11/06/2009 (general), 11/09/2009 (z/OS) and 11/12/2009 (general)
GSE IMS and DB2 Group : 26/03/2009 (DB2), 24/09/2009 (DB2-SOA joint event), November 2009 (IMS)

And the 8th Regional Conference on "New Enterprise Data Center" is on April 23-24, 2009 in Spa.

Time to put your agendas up to date !

Redbook : Implementing Rexx Support in SDSF

Dolmen is hosting the three-monthly meeting of the Belgian GSE (Guide Share Europe) zOS working group. The latest was last week and we also had a 'z/OS 1.9 Preview' presentation. If you're interested you can find it (amongst some other presentations) on the download page of the Belgian GSE z/OS Working group site. One of the things that was mentioned was the new System REXX. You can now run REXX outside of TSO via programming interface or operator command. One of the uses of System REXX is that the Health Checker now support checks written in System REXX.
The redbook 'Implementing REXX support in SDSF' (still a draft) how REXX support has been added to SDSF in z/OS 1.9. "This function provides the ability to access SDSF panel data through REXX variables. In addition, the data can be modified in a manner similar to SDSF action characters and overtypes. SYSOUT data sets can be browsed using EXECIO or printed using SDSF functions. This book describes the new support and provides sample REXX execs that exploit the new function." The Redbook provides lots of samples so that you can immediately (well, not before september) try out lots of "real-world tasks related to operations, systems programming, system administration, and automation".

GSE z/OS Working Group presentations

Last week there was a GSE z/OS Working Group meeting. Perhaps because I'm not that familiar with the topics any more, I found the presentations on CICS connectivity and IMS connectivity to be very interesting. I'm no longer writing applications myself for the moment, but it keeps surprising me how well 'old' technologies as CICS and IMS keep up the pace with new developments e.g. nearly flawlessly integrating into the whole SOA story. And I cannot resist repeating the quote from Enterprise Systems Journal you must've seen before : "The irony is that host applications are probably better suited for exposure as part of an SOA than many applications based on more modern 4GL objectoriented languages, said Phil Murphy, a principal analyst with consultancy Forrester Research, in an interview last year".
You can dowload the presentations at the Download section of the GSE z/OS Working Group webpage.