• Compete - feeding CICS events to business dashboard tools like WebSphere Business Monitor, gives an enterprise real insight into how their business is running, enabling them to react to changing patterns, respond to new opportunities, etc
• Comply - by routing events from CICS to a Business Event Processing system such as WebSphere Business Events, customers can quickly identify and respond to out of line situations, such as unusual patterns of behaviour in bank accounts, share dealing, enabling them to meet regulatory compliance requirements
• Control costs - the non-invasive emission of CICS events greatly reduces the effort required to generate new events or to modify existing events, while the tooling integrated into the CICS Explorer removes the need to learn yet another tool

• 16 sessions dedicated to Enterprise Modernization
• Technical Workshops including Collaborative Development Using IBM Rational Team Concert for IBM System z
• Complimentary IBM Certification Testing
• IBM Rational Labs
• Birds-of-A-Feather Sessions
• Networking opportunities with IBM executives and security industry thought leaders
  

• Tell your clients:  When 10 of more of your customers to register with the promo code BHDD  they will save $100 on their registration fee!   If you refer 10 or more customers who use this code - by Friday, May 15, 2009 - you will receive one complimentary registration to attend the conference!  (Customers must reference your company as a referral when registering.  To follow-up on your free pass after 10 registrations have been completed, contact our registration manager at: rsdc@experient-inc.com).
  

IBM Rational Awards for Business Partners -- Nominations are now open!

We are pleased to continue this 2nd annual recognition of our worldwide Business Partners' dedication to building solutions and services using IBM Rational Software.  We will announce a winner and finalist for "Outstanding customer solution with IBM Rational® Software" by:

1. an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) solution
2. a Systems Integrator
3. a Reseller/Solution Provider (VAR)
   

Plus...

4. Outstanding system-focused customer solution with IBM Rational® Software by an ISV or VAR

Nominations close Friday, April 17, 2009.  More information available at www.ibm.com/rational/rsdc - look for the 'Business Partner Activities' option on the left-hand navigation bar.  

March 12 marked another milestone in the campaign - the launch of the full Myth vs. Truth Web experience, and a new "Myth of the Month" outbound email driving to it.

New myth videos ― and more. The expanded Web experience now features six myths, depicted in videos and illustrations designed to intrigue, surprise and amuse. Each myth leads to a serious truth about a key System z capability, including a direct link to deeper content on the System z software site.

Interactive quiz - The new Myth vs. Truth Web presence also includes an interactive quiz, which employs the same whimsical myth-serious truth approach in a true-false format. Users can test their z knowledge, and forward to a friend to do the same.

"Myth of the Month" email - The March 12 email, featuring a new "CSI"-style video, was sent to 20K IT executives in North America, and drives to the enhanced Myth vs. Truth website.

• 400+ sessions in our Technical Track, covering  CICS and enterprise modernization,  Enterprise connectivity, Application Development, Process management, and IT Infrastructure security and management.
• The unveiling of CICS V4.1, our first major CICS release in two years with specifics on:
• Incorporating Event Processing into your CICS infrastructure.
• Enabling you to develop Web 2.0 applications that easily extend your CICS applications
• Discover how you can service-enable your applications in a RESTful style, by use of dynamic scripting in CICS applications using PHP
• How to configure CICS explorer, our new tooling and the "new face of CICS" to be a unified interface for Configuration management, Performance analysis and application development  
• How to create SCA components from existing CICS program assets
• Direct exposure to the Hursley development lab team so you can hear directly from the CICS developers and architects.   
• Over 300 SOA clients speakers sharing their success stories with you. 
• New best practices presentations:    Level 2 Supports most common requests, CICS and DB2 Debugging best practices, How to design High Performing Web Enabled CICS applications, Securing CICS Web Services 
• Our Demo Center which will showing  the full scope of CICS 4.1 tooling
• Interacting with Dave Andrews, our CICS Product Director during his CICS family update with open Q/A. 
• Informal discussions with your peers in the CICS TechZone. 
• One-stop Certification Testing
  

• Impact:  May 3-8 (Las Vegas, NV)
• RSC:  May 31 - June 4 (Orlando, FL)
• Information on Demand Europe, Middle East & Africa:  June 2-5 (Berlin, Germany)
• SHARE:  August 23-28 (Denver, CO)
  
• IDUG Europe 2009:  October 5-9 (Rome, Italy)
• Information on Demand Global Conference:  October 25-29 (Las Vegas, NV)
  
• 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
  

•  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

 Open to Business Partners, customers and IBMers

A Smarter way to Successful SOA – Information as a trusted strategic asset
Webcast: April 2, 2009

• In this webcast, you’ll learn how Data Services, Data Abstraction and information as a Service can deliver the business benefits and ROI you expect from you SOA project and, further:
• How to ensure your SOA implementation has easy access to the right information to maximize your ROI
• How to enable processes and applications to consume accurate information and support the decision making process
• How to optimize processes using the right information
• Click here to register

What’s new in IMS: Important news you may have missed
Teleconference: April 7, 2009

• Over the past few years, the IMS™ developers have produced a steady number of enhancements and new functions that were not announced as part of a new IMS release, but which have been made available as PTFs. Consequently, they have slipped quietly into the product, and may have escaped your notice.
• They cover a broad range of IMS components – DL/1, HALDB, Fastpath, DBRC, data sharing, CSL, and so on. This presentation reviews the most significant functional enhancements that have been delivered through the service process for IMS 9 and IMS 10.
• Click here to register

The future of SOA on z/OS built on a smarter foundation of CICS TS V4, WAS V7 and Rational
Teleconference: April 8, 2009

• In this session, IBM products experts will show you how to:
• Improve SOA-based composite application time to market and flexibility.
• Protect application investments by enabling practical asset reuse and composite business applications 
• Do more with less by achieving greater business agility and IT flexibility by leveraging your company’s existing software assets and skills in delivering new business solutions 
• Build winning software teams by improving operational efficiency, quality and productivity through effective collaboration and quality management solutions
• Click here to register

Accelerate application development, achieve greater business agility and improve business insights with DB2 9 for z/OS pureXML
Teleconference: April 21, 2009

• The breakthrough hybrid database server DB2® 9 for z/OS® integrates XML database technology into relational databases, providing unprecedented scalability and performance for both relational and XML data. The hybrid database server also helps improve performance and scalability by avoiding complex joins commonly seen in an object persistence solution with relational databases. This teleconference offers an overview of pureXML technology in DB2 9 for z/OS, its business values and technical feature details.
• Click here to register

Simplify the change, management and deployment of distributed and mainframe software assets
Teleconference: April 22, 2009

• These economic times are challenging for any business to find ways to remain productive and yet cut costs. Organizations operate under the need to reduce their IT costs within the constraints of existing technology and its high maintenance costs. IBM provides change and release management solutions that help businesses lower their software development costs and increase operational efficiencies, while gaining time-to-market with less project risk through repeatable and automatic tooling that work across platforms. With a solution that works on System z to distributed platforms, all developers utilize a common process for ease of learning and productivity. Avoid components in production getting out of sync. We’ll show how our solutions can reduce your yearly maintenance budget while providing the business value high-quality solutions of change management, configuration management and build release tools that you insist upon within your development life-cycle.
• Click here to register

Smarter Application Modernization saves time, money and maybe your job with Phil Murphy, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research and Hayden Lindsey, IBM Vice President, Enterprise Modernization
Webcast: April 23, 2009

• Forrester’s application modernization framework and IBM solutions offer a practical application modernization and portfolio management roadmap to help your IT organization:
• Leverage portfolio value, build flexible architectures and superior quality workloads to quickly respond to change
• Choose the most optimal deployment platform for modern and new workloads 
• Empower existing and new skills to achieve greater business agility and IT productivity 
• Improve operational efficiency of teams through consolidation, collaboration, and governance 
• Click here to register

Managing large objects in a DB2 for z/OS environment – tips and techniques
Teleconference: April 28, 2009

• If you have LOBs in your DB2 for z/OS environment, learn how the DB2 Adminsitration Tool and DB2 Utilities Suite for z/OS can help you mange them efficiently and effectively. This teleconference looks at the types of activities that a DBA performs to manage a DB2® environment with Large Objects (LOBs). We’ll discuss some of the more common administrative functions involving LOB data and DB2 tables including how to create the structures to hold LOBs using templates, changing a table where a LOB column is defined, reclaiming space in the LOB table space after DML is performed, dropping LOB and auxiliary table spaces, and migrating databases to a new environment where LOBs columns are included in tables.
• Click here to register

Accelerate Business Innovation: Extend and
Teleconference: April 29, 2008

• 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