A Tale of Two Cloud Transformations

Being engaged in the growth of cloud infrastructure for over a decade, I got to see and live through successes and failures of various cloud transformation journeys. Interestingly, two of them exemplify the spectrum of “pie in the sky” disappointment to “bang for the buck” impact. Both are large multi-billion dollar enterprises in the industrial
reserve capacity storage

Reserve Capacity in Skytap on Azure: Self-Service Now Available

Skytap has offered reserve capacity (RC) in our Microsoft Azure and IBM Cloud offerings for just over two years now, but until recently, you were required to work through your account representative to request your RC. With the latest update to Skytap on Azure, you can now purchase reserve capacity directly within the Skytap portal

IBM Power 8 End of Support – What does it mean for you?

As technology ages, it becomes increasingly costly to maintain and update. This is a very relatable scenario for anyone who uses technology. Take for example an 8-year-old iPad mini. Despite still being functional for basic tasks, it can no longer support the latest software and applications, and likely has slowing performance and shortened battery life.

Skytap Template Backup and Copy-to-Region for Disaster Recovery

As an IT Pro, you know the importance of having a disaster recovery (DR) plan in place. However, budget constraints can make it difficult to implement a full DR solution. One way to prepare for a disaster is to create an offsite copy of your source data or environment, and a great way to do

Why Skytap has become the de facto cloud for AIX and IBM i

As CEO of a cloud migration services company, I guide enterprises each week on their digital transformation and the best path to the cloud. And over the past decade, the challenge that frequently surfaces is how to include legacy applications in the broader cloud transformation initiative. We’ve all seen how modern applications have migrated to

Using Azure NetApp Files with Power Systems in Skytap on Azure

As a Cloud Solutions Architect at Skytap, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a variety of customers who are looking for robust and high-performance file storage solutions. One that has stood out to me as a particularly powerful option is Azure NetApp Files (ANF). Given my experience with this option, I wanted to share

IBM i Journal Caching

IBM i journaling is a built-in optional feature of the operating system designed to track any change to a given object.  For example, a library, DB2 database, data queues, IFS (integrated file system), etc. The purpose of journaling is to be able to recover the object in the event of failure. Customers must create a journal
airplane in the sky

Southwest needs a lift-and-shift to the multi-cloud, then refactor.

Most of us have heard about the crisis Southwest Airlines had over the holidays. Most articles cite “problems related to legacy systems…” and “outdated scheduling software called SkySolver.” Though Southwest received a lot of attention from this incident and has offered affected customers loyalty points for the resulting disruptions, the legacy software problems encountered by

Rclone on IBM Power – AIX and IBM i

Rclone is a command-line program to manage files on cloud storage. It is a feature-rich alternative to cloud vendors’ web storage interfaces. Over 40 cloud storage products support Rclone including S3 object stores, business & consumer file storage services, as well as standard transfer protocols. I’m a big Rclone fan.  Helping migrate AIX and IBM i to

.NET 7 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Power – What does it mean?

Unlocking this architecture’s development for Modern MS tools for any Power Linux OS is progress, PPC64LE repositories have languished regarding enabling things like PowerShell or .Net or other modern MS Tools, and will enable the current generation of developers to start leveraging their organization’s already established investments in Power architecture.

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