New white papers for Enterprise Modernization on System z:

• The Business Value of Enterprise Modernization - Gain insight into making your existing System z™ mainframe applications more flexible and robust.
• Enterprise Modernization: Maintain, Extend, and Integrate with IBM Rational on System z - An Analyst perspective to learn how modernizing your core mainframe assets can help you respond to prevailing business challenges, decrease costs and increase agility.
  

New Customer References for WebSphere:

A collection of excellent reference materials for WebSphere ESB on z/OS and WebSphere Process Server on z/OS is now available, including a new case study for Ball State. 

 A quote from the case study:  "If you tried to have each system be aware of 40 other systems where addresses are kept, you’d be constantly in maintenance mode trying to accommodate how another system maintains addresses and how do you communicate to it. So, the advent of SOA and Web services is not just an evolutionary step, to me it’s a revolutionary step." - –Fred Nay, IT Director, Ball State University

In case you missed the announcement at Pulse, IBM announced their solutions for the Dynamic Infrastructure initiative on February 9th.  The IBM Dynamic Infrastructure strategy addresses a broad range of issues faced by clients.  By aligning your company's skills and capabilities with Dynamic Infrastructure solutions, you're able to more fully assist clients in business and IT transformation which can translate into higher value, higher margin sales for you.  

IBM System z is a pinnacle of a Dynamic Infrastructure -- a new initiative launched Monday to help businesses create streamlined, self-managing infrastructure hubs.

For more information on System z and Dynamic Infrastructure, including presentations and a teleconference, click here.

• IBM Tivoli Business Partner Summit Presentations
• Pulse Presentations

 Upcoming Seminars

• Extending Your Mainframe for More Business Value
• Complimentary March Seminars
• In this full-day seminar, Extending Your Mainframe for More Business Value, we’ll offer both introductory and advanced sessions on how to:
• Achieve immediate productivity of new hires to the mainframe, for both operations and application development
  Implement a data warehouse on System z™, and use the analytical and reporting tools to make real-time decisions
  
• Optimize platform selection for new applications by understanding the deployment capabilities and characteristics of z/OS® 
• Show compliance of IT systems with the latest industry of federal regulations
  
• This seminar will help you better understand System z products and services available to you, as well as best practices to follow so you can learn from the experience of your peers.
• Click here to register
• Application Integration for CICS and IMS application in a Smart SOA
  
• Complimentary seminars in March
  
• Join IBM for this complimentary half-day seminar to learn how enterprise application connectivity can become a reality with System z as the hub of your SOA.  We'll show you how to get the most out of your SOA by using WebSphere® solutions with the Enterprise Services Bus (ESB), an extension to the messaging backbone that improves business performance, and enables enterprise application connectivity, monitoring and management.
• Click here to register
  
• Process management, modeling to optimization
  
• Complimentary seminars in March
• Attend a free, half-day technical seminar and learn how effective process management - from modeling to optimization - can help transform your business for the 21st century. In, "IBM WebSphere® Business Applications and Process Management," learn how to best model your processes for performance and automation, assemble legacy applications and monitor processes against a set of pre-determined performance indicators.
• Click here to register
• Managing risks & controls - a best practices approach to systems management
  
• Complimentary seminar March 10, Columbus, OH
• Attend our free seminar and learn how to use systems management tools to handle Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), governance, compliance, automation and chargeback. Business and technical professionals from finance, operations and IT will learn best practices for managing critical systems and processes.
• Click here to register
  
• Data warehousing and business intelligence on System z deliver optimal performance and scale of enterprise business processes
  
• March Seminars
• Join IBM for this complimentary half-day seminar to learn about new ways of utilizing your mainframe. Even though mainframes capture and host the majority of data used in data warehousing and business intelligence (BI), businesses have been offloading data and performing analysis on distributed platforms. Recent studies suggest a smarter approach: This information will be far more secure, timely, recoverable and cost less when using mainframe technologies.
  
• This seminar will highlight the technologies that IBM has been driving such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and its recent acquisition of Cognos for BI solutions on analysis and business planning. These products comprise a comprehensive data integration and delivery solution that capitalize on the unique capabilities of the mainframe. From data governance to operational BI , System z now has the tooling for robust implementations.
• Click here to register
• This event is not exclusive to System z it is for all software

• Modern application development featuring Web 2.0 for System z event
•  Live event - March 10 in Lenexa, KS
• Bring you customers and Explose the innovations provided by IBM Rational Etnerprise Modernization software development tools, their broad range of udnctionality and their use throughout the entire software development process.
• Objectives
• Understand the breadth and depth of Rational Enterprise Modernization software development tools, how well they're integrated, and how easy they are to use.
  
• Get an overview of Web 2.0 in terms of economic, community, and technology issues for your company.
• Participate in hands-on exercises to experience various development steps in the application lifecycle and to create and integrate Web 2.0 applications with Enterprise Generation Language (EGL).
• To register
  

• 2009 Conferences:

• SHARE User Conference:  March 1-6 (Austin, TX)
  
• Impact:  May 3-8 (Las Vegas, NV)
• RSC:  May 31 - June 4 (Orlando, FL)
• IDUG Europe 2009:  October 5-9 (Rome, Italy)
  
• System z Expo:  October 5-9 (Orlando, FL)
  

• Technical Briefing - System z Skills Update:  Modernizing and Optimizing the Mainframe
• April 28:   1/2 Day in Austin, TX (no charge)
• Open to customers, business partners and IBMers
• This briefing provides an in-depth look at a System z environment today and at some of the challenges and opportunities facing enterprise IT. We will discuss the skills, tools, and techniques necessary to build Web-based and service-oriented environments; how new techniques of virtualization enable hardware and software consolidation; simplification of administration; and overall cost savings.
• Details and to register
  

• Application Integration for CICS and IMS applications in a Smart SOA
• March 5:  1/2 Day in Dallas, TX (no charge)
  
• Open to customers, business partners and IBMers
• Learn how your mainframe can be used to integrate applications across platforms, existing CICS and IMS apps and new workloads, to support a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).
• Details and to register
  

•  Don't forget about the new z101 online class!
  

• Upcoming System z Software Top Gun classes in 2009:  Schedule is still being defined for 2009, check out the System z Software Top Gun site for more information.
• IBM TGVL:  System z Software Foundation
• February 3-6, 2009
• Do you need high quality, role based, live, interactive sales education?  Is travel an issue for you?  Then TOP GUN Virtual Learning (TGVL) may be just what you need!  The TOP GUN team has completely re-architected the well-known, face-to-face TOP GUN classes to adapt to the virtual environment!! 
  

 Open to Business Partners, customers and IBMers

• Using IMS Callout Techniques to Invoke Web Services
• Teleconference: March 3
• Join us for this complimentary teleconference as we discuss IMS as an integration focal point as well as how the IMS Callout function can help extend your business to invoke external application and web services.
• Click here to register
• Future-Proof your Applications with SCA: Programming model optimized for SOA
• Teleconference: March 4
• Designed by key technology vendors, including IBM, the SCA programming model, provided in the WebSphere® Application Server Feature Pack for SCA, supports the principals of SOA through application flexibility and agility. Service implementation and access method details are moved out of business
  applications and into middleware. As service details or locations change, the application can remain unaffected. SCA helps application developers maximize productivity through focus on solving business problems with application code rather than protocols and locations.
  
• Spend a few minutes with Steve Kinder, a SOA Foundation Architect, to learn how this new programming model can be a real “value-add” to your SOA Application efforts.  
• Click here to register
• Best Practices in Data Warehouse loading and synchronization with ‘z’ data
• Teleconference: March 10
• The US State agency has its operational data store on IMS™. The Data Warehouse that serves several end-user web applications resides on Oracle® on AIX®. The IMS based operational data store is constantly updated by clerks, commissioners, and other users throughout the day. In addition, batch updates are also applied during evenings and weekends. The department uses a combination of IBM InfoSphere™ software offerings for the mainframe and AIX to populate and synchronize, in near real time, the Data Warehouse with the operational data store. This provides its end-users with the most current, complete and trusted case information.
  
• Please join experts from the IBM InfoSphere team for a deep dive on this topic. 
• Click here to register
• Accelerate Business Innovation: Extend and
  
• Teleconference: March 11
• Today, businesses are unable to consider new innovation initiatives because they are constrained by technical barriers and the complexity of integrating their legacy systems into new Web and SOA solutions. Typically, these existing systems run a majority of the day-to-day business of the organization, and have been developed over time to handle the complex rules of the business. Rewriting these systems is simply not an option (due to cost, risk, and time), so businesses must find ways to take and reuse what they already have. Join our teleconference to hear from a panelist of modernization experts to see how you can radically simplify the development of production business applications using solutions from IBM Rational and Kapow Technologies. Leapfrog traditional integration projects and avoid costly and risky rewrites.
  
• Click here to register
• IBM Tivoli zSecure suite V1.10 Enhances Enterprise Security
  
• Teleconference: March 12
• The IBM Tivoli zSecure suite V1.10 for z/OS consists of multiple modular components designed to help you administer your mainframe security server, monitor for threats, assist in compliance monitoring and auditing, audit usage and configurations, and enforce policy compliance. Administration, provisioning, and management components can significantly reduce administration time, effort, and costs through decentralized administration, contributing to improved productivity, faster response time, and reduced training time needed for new administrators. Join us for the informative teleconference. 
• Click here to register
• Smarter Application Modernization and Portfolio Management Saves Time, Money, And Maybe Your Job
• Webcast: March 12
• Forrester’s application modernization framework and IBM solutions offer a practical application modernization and portfolio management roadmap to help your IT organization: 1) Leverage portfolio value, build flexible architectures and superior quality workloads to quickly respond to change, 2)Choose the most optimal deployment platform for modern and new workloads, 3) Empower existing and new skills to achieve greater business agility and IT productivity, and 4) Improve operational efficiency of teams through consolidation, collaboration, and governance
  
• In this webcast you’ll hear from Phil Murphy, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research and Rich Cronheim, Strategy and Product Manager for Application Portfolio Management at IBM, to learn how you can rapidly modernize and manage your application portfolio to reduce costs and deliver concrete business benefits today. 
• Click here to register
• IMS Problem Investigator – exploring the ‘black holes’ of IMS performance
• Teleconference: March 17
• System Programmers responsible for IMS are being asked to resolve problems with increasingly complex IMS transactions. Modern IMS applications often include DB2 and WebSphere MQ as part of the application lifecycle. Being able to quickly isolate the problem or performance issue to the correct part of the application is crucial to quick problem resolution. In this teleconference you’ll learn how using the IMS Problem Investigator, you can quickly explore an IMS transactions lifecycle. This includes any impact that might be the result of DB2 and/or WebSphere MQ. IMS PI allows you to merge the logs from IMS, DB2, and WebSphere MQ so that the complete transaction lifecycle can be displayed in a relative or elapsed timeline. Understanding the part of the application that is experiencing poor performance allows the IMS Systems Programmer to obtain the help of other subject matter experts to quickly resolve the issue.
• Click here to register
• Build a cost-effective ESB solution for secure web services access to z application
• Teleconference: March 18
• In this teleconference find out how ESB’s from IBM enable you to provide access to z assets to your business partners and clients through quickly creating new services. Learn why companies who need to be in production very quickly, are doing extensive XML processing combined with high performance requirements or need advanced Web services standards, can benefit from WebSphere DataPower Integration Appliance, with examples of project requirements and business outcomes were.
• Click here to register
• Solving Mainframe Systems Management Challenges in an SOA World Using OMEGAMON
• Teleconference: March 19
• Service Oriented Architecture is an architectural style for creating and using computer business processes. SOA poses unique challenges from a performance and availability management perspective. This teleconference will discuss how to forge an effective performance and availability management strategy keeping in mind the unique challenges posed by SOA. Effective performance and availability strategies will be discussed, and examples will be shown using IBM Tivoli solutions based around the capabilities of the Tivoli Enterprise Portal. Solutions discussed will include OMEGAMON XE For z/OS, OMEGAMON XE For IMS, OMEGAMON XE For CICS, OMEGAMON XE For Messaging, IT/CAM (Composite Application Management) monitoring and Business Service Management. Best practices for the planning, design, and implementation of an effective strategy will be covered. 
• Click here to register
• The right time, the right platform - - System z for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence
• Teleconference: March 24
• More and more, enterprise installations are taking a hard look at the assets they have in place to support Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence (BI). Data volumes as well as the demand for on-time analyses of data to deliver critical business information are increasing while resources continue to be constrained. Where there is an IBM System z infrastructure in place, businesses are looking at how to best leverage this investment and further increase its value to the enterprise. Join us for the teleconference to learn about new hardware and software technologies from IBM that have significantly increased the ability of System z to create, maintain, and scale a Data Warehouse and BI infrastructure as a highly cost-effective and competitive platform. Environmental issues such as power consumption also weigh in on the evaluation of System z as an effective, low-cost solution platform for Warehousing and BI initiatives. These and other factors of global proportions are influencing this new wave in evaluating IBM System z for Warehousing and BI.
• Click here to register
• Aligning IT Costs with Business Goals
• Teleconference: March 25
• IBM IT Financial Management Solutions provide enterprises with the insight needed to take charge of their IT infrastructure costs. Measure, analyze, report and charge the utilization and costs of different computing resources -- including virtualized environments, servers, storage, networks, databases, messaging and many other shared services. Attend this teleconference and learn more about IBM offerings in this space.
• Click here to register
• IBM DB2 Query Monitor...it's more than just a query monitor!
• Teleconference: March 31
• Tired of monitoring for the "status quo?" Are you on a scavenger hunt looking for answers to your problems? Do you wish the real or potential problems would just bubble up to the top and show themselves to you? This teleconference will focus on using IBM DB2 Query Monitor for z/OS to quickly find a query that's consuming the most CPU. We'll show you not only how to find these CPU-intensive queries, but how to resolve the more common problems and questions, like:
• Who stopped my database?
• What value was used in my host variable on my cursor?
• What's in my SQL/CA?
  
• Join this teleconference and see why DB2 Query Monitor is more than just a query monitor.
• Click here to register

• A Smarter way to Successful SOA - Information as a trusted strategic asset
  
• Software Executive Webcast
• With Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) maturing and being top of mind with many IT execs, expectations for successful outcomes are higher than ever. One of the key success factors that is often over looked is how data and information is managed as part of the solution. Many SOA projects focus on the integration aspects - enabling business functions and applications to be represented as a set of well defined reusable services. But without open easy access to the necessary data developers and integration architects continue to struggle to know where best to source that data from, what data to use, how to abstract the complexity of the data and whether it is of the right context and quality. The consequences are that some SOA projects miss deadlines, go over budget and deliver less business value than expected.
  
• Join David Linthicum and Mark Simmonds for this webcast and learn about Data Services, Data Abstraction and Information as a Service and how the IBM Information Management portfolio deliver these to further enhance IBM's SOA leadership - helping deliver the business benefits and ROI you expect from your SOA project. 
• Click here to register