IBM Systems Magazine, Power Systems edition - Fresh Faces - May 2017 - FF8
| FRESH FACES OF IBM i | he biggest trends affecting my business right now are business intelligence and big data. I've been working on IBM i for three years, and my most interesting current projects involve opensource BIRT. Our company specializes in developing reports and advising clients on BI solutions and strategies. The strength of BIRT is that it's built on Java* and it's highly capable of being integrated. This can be a blessing and curse at the same time, because when I have to implement certain customer requirements, I have to know exactly what the technology is capable of performing. The advantage of the IBM i platform is that BIRT is built into many products. This allows IBM clients who have smaller reporting requirements (such as Maximo) to achieve a fast and efficient result. To me, the coolest thing about IBM i is the integrated architecture, which matches powerful hardware with fine-tuned software. I recommend a career in IBM i because you get a complete insight into a long-standing, stable and innovative OS. T FELIX BUSCH LEARN MORE IT C ONS ULTA NT TRADUI TECH NO L O G IES G mbH To see more Fresh Faces and find out what's new for IBM i, check out the IBM i website, ibm.com/systems/power/software/i | SPOTLIGHT ON 22 YEARS OF INNOVATION | 've been working on IBM i and its predecessors for 22 years. My consultancy company specializes in various programming projects for clients on IBM i. Our clients operate in different sectors and range from small companies to large enterprises. For one of our customers, a design furniture company called JORI, we developed a 3D configurator running on IBM i. The JORI collection has, at present, 102 models including sofas, armchairs, reclining chairs, tables and more. Our JORI 3D configurator (bit.ly/2mJkf5P) allows customers to compose and visualize their own configurations. This configurator won the COMMON Benelux Excellence Award in the application development category. Along with several other projects, I'm also building a render server on IBM i that will create 3D renderings. Nowadays this is mainly done on client PCs, but that takes a lot of time. Rendering on the server allows more possibilities in 3D on IBM i. Being part of the IBM i community has helped me immensely. Many great people have donated to the community in open-source tools. I donated a POP3 mail client written in RPG to the open-source EASY400 community. I started what I call "co-sourcing" projects among my clients. This means that each of them codes part of a common software application. I coordinate things and also contribute code. In the end, all of the participants get a custom-made software product with less coding effort than doing everything yourself. I KOEN DECORTE OW NER A ND FO U NDER C D-INV ES T 8 ibmsystemsmag.com