From Pete's Desk :.

Compliance and Your IT Health

To our clients and friends,

We are midway through the first decade of the new millennium. One force that continues to roll through the business scene with greater momentum is the wide array of new compliance regulations sparked by corporate malfeasance earlier in this decade.

Some of the laws playing a big part in the new area of IT compliance are:

• Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act of 2002 - Specifies penalties for document alteration or destruction.
  
• SEC 17 CFR 240.17a-4(f) - Requires certain records to be in non-erasable, non-rewriteable form.
  
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) - Mandates confidentiality of personal health records through administrative, physical and technical safeguards.
  
• Patriot Act - Governs access to communications and records; reviewed/changed by Congress.
  
• FDA 21 CFR Part 11 - Pharmaceutical industry rules for positive identification of records and audit trails.
  
• Basel II Accord - Levels the playing field for central banks.
  
• U.S. DoD 5015.2 - Standards for e-records management in the defense industry.

Over 10,000 different regulations now impact the way corporations communicate and report all sorts of data. Under the rubric of compliance, these regulations are changing the way companies store, archive, backup and protect their data. We are monitoring the developments in the widening arena of IT compliance and will report on them in future issues.

Careful planning and maintenance of IT is one way of ensuring compliance as well as the long-term health and effectiveness of your IT infrastructure. To support our clients in this area, Key has developed a series of assessments that evaluate the condition of major building blocks within your IT infrastructure. You can learn more about these assessment services under Key Offers at the end of this newsletter.

KEY Webinars offer an excellent opportunity to participate in online seminars on highly relevant topics with the nation's top speakers. Here's an updated schedule of our remaining Webinars in 2005:

September 27 Webinar - Dynamic Document Generation using Scriptura XBOS
October 20 Webinar - Compliant Data Archiving with the IBM DR550

For a listing of all of Key's coming events, see the Calendar section of Key's Web site at: http://www.keyinfo.com/Resources/calendar.htm

Yours in success,

Pete Elliot
Director of Marketing
pelliot@keyinfo.com
1.818.737.2804
Bio: http://www.keyinfo.com/About/People/pete.htm

September 27 Webinar - Dynamic Document Generation :.

Title: Cross-Platform Document Design & Generation Tools

Presenter: Ron Deardorff, North American Technical Support Manager, Scriptura XBOS

Our September KEY Webinar will allow you to discover how to dynamically generate all types of business output, documents, PTFs and reports using Scriptura XBOS. You'll learn how IT professionals and end-users easily create complex documents using this cross-platform Java-based solution that includes iSeries and supports XML and JDBC data sources. Attendees will see how Scriptura XBOS logic dynamically modifies letterhead, logos, conditional paragraphs and charts on the fly. This one solution can dramatically reduce TCO for document development and maintenance.

This KEY Webinar is designed for mid-level applications IT staff that create printed or electronic business output as well as users desiring the skills to develop and maintain their own business application forms.

Date: Tuesday September 27, 2005
Time: 11am to noon, Pacific Time
Registration: At no cost. Registrants receive an email confirmation and a link to the Webinar.
To register, click here.

August 25 Webinar - Health-Check Your TSM :.

Presenters: Jason Turner, Product Manager for Tivoli Storage Manager at IBM; Chris Parker, TSM Health-Check Specialist at Key; and Jack Ryan, Product Manager at TSM Reports.com

Key's August 25th Webinar was titled Health-Check Your Tivoli Storage Manager. It was the most widely attended of all of the Webinars that Key has produced this year, demonstrating the intense interest in IBM's flagship backup/recovery software product. This Internet-based seminar featured Jason Turner, Product Manager for Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) at IBM. Co-presenting were Chris Parker, TSM Health-Check Specialist at Key and Jack Ryan, Product Manager at TSM Reports.com. Focus was on new developments in the Tivoli product for installed Tivoli users and those assessing the value of Tivoli for their installations. The Webinar also highlighted Key's new service for conducting a health-check of your installed TSM solution. Key topics included how to measure your Tivoli performance, what to watch out for that could render Tivoli less productive and planned product enhancements.

To see the full article, click here.

Interview with Frank Pecora of Vision Solutions :.

iSeries Optimization and Managment Made Easy

Frank Pecora is Regional Sales Manager at Vision Solutions, Inc., which recently introduced OS Director, a complementary offering to the company's suite of highly affordable high-availability software for the AS/400, iSeries and i5 servers.

INsights: What's the high-level scoop on OS Director?
Pecora: OS Director was built to address the expectations that OS/400 users originally had, that OS/400 would be a highly self-managing systems environment. That didn't really turn out to be the case. While the operating system does do a lot, there are many areas that need third-party involvement - especially as it relates to cleanup and optimization.

INsights: Could you give us an example?
Pecora: Typically, I/O is a major constraint in servers. CPU upgrades do not fix this. Throwing memory, DASD and controller hardware at the issue only masks the problem, at great expense. OS Director addresses the fundamentals of performance, especially as they relate to deleted records and logical file optimization. Once those fundamentals are optimized, then the systems manager has a firm foundation on which to do performance tuning.

INsights: What can it do for the systems administrator?
Pecora: Regarding system management, OS Director is designed to put all kinds of information about the system and all of its objects, including IFS, at the fingertips of a system administrator. With this information easily available, and presented in highly useful ways, it's much easier for the systems administrator to know what's happening in the system or investigate an issue.

INsights: What does OS Director do for the actual system?
Pecora: OS Director improves performance, saves disk space, and saves time spent managing a system, according to specific policies defined by the user. It does this by knowing what to do, when to do it, and how to do it the way an expert SE would - an SE who never takes a vacation, is always available, and always knows the answer right away.

INsights: Is disk usage a relevant issue?
Pecora: Regarding disk space, the point is often made that the cost of DASD continues to drop, so it isn't that critical to worry about saving disk space anymore. A more salient point today is that it is not about the raw cost of disk, but rather the ever-increasing cost of managing that disk, and the ever-increasing associated system overhead cost that needs to be managed.

INsights: How does OS Director help with disk usage?
Pecora: Disk resources are conserved in a number of important ways. One is through file reorganizations that OS Director performs according to policies put in by the user. They can be intelligently-run standard reorgs, or reorgs-in-place that are done without interrupting production. Managing and optimizing logical files is another area where disk space can be saved. Moreover, OS Director can easily identify files and objects (including in IFS) that are candidates for cleanup: unused, redundant copies, etc. All of these actions also have a significant positive effect on I/O. Using less disk space also means shorter backup windows and less media used. In a high-availability environment, that means less "stuff" to ship over the wire. Fewer I/Os on the source side translate into fewer applies on the target side. This is what we mean when we talk about "Optimized High Availability." Everything is more efficient and streamlined.

INsights: Anything else?
Pecora: There are also many other valuable features of OS Director. Some reduce space occupied by programs. Others provide extensive policy-based spool-file management (saving, archiving, purging), and much more.

The best way for a customer to understand OS Director is to try it for free on their own box. It is very simple to install and takes little system resources. It will run in "forecast" mode as a default, so nothing is actually done on the system, but one can easily see what it could do.

Spotlight on Key Talent :.

Scott Pond, Director of Services

Scott Pond has been in the IT industry for 23 years, working for the past 12 years in the IBM Channels arena, specializing in AIX/pSeries, Tivoli and Storage products. Pond's previous work was in the areas of secure communications and operating system design, TCP/IP Router R&D, and as a member of an end-user IT staff.

We caught up with Pond on a typically busy day at Key's headquarters in Woodland Hills to ask a little about his work at Key and what he's doing with Key's clients.

INsights: What are your areas of specialty?
Pond: I hold IBM Certifications in Storage Area Networking and Virtualization where I wrote IBM's Test 279 and 384; also in TSM, where I wrote IBM's ADSM 3.1 and TSM 3.7 tests. I wrote IBM's certification for the IBM TotalStorage DS6800 and DS8000 series. I also wrote IBM's Open Storage Certification, as well as all of the ESS certifications for the IBM High-End Storage certs. Finally, I am ranked a CATE by IBM (Certified AIX Technical Expert).

INsights: What is your main function at Key?
Pond: As Director of Services, I manage all the specialists at Key who provide technical services to our clients. This includes determining the best use of our technical staff to best meet our clients' needs, monitoring progress and schedule attainment as the jobs progress, and providing a quality review function to ensure that work is performed to the high standards that have evolved at Key.

INsights: What are some of the services you're able to provide Key's clients?
Pond: Here's a short list:
• Design, installation and configuration support for DS4000, ESS storage, DS6800 and DS8000 solutions
• Design and implementation of pSeries
• Design and implementation of Enterprise Tape Systems
• Design and implementation of SAN architectures
• Design and implementation of TSM Enterprise Backup Solutions

INsights: What are your interests outside of work?
Pond: For my outside interests, I am a licensed pilot and a certified SCUBA diver.

Pond can be reached at spond@keyinfo.com.

Key Offers :.

For more information about these offers from Key, please contact your Key representative or Allen Shahdadi at ashahdadi@keyinfo.com.

TSM Health-Check Service
Analysis of your current Tivoli Storage Management environment to take advantage of all TSM capabilities and support backup growth projections. Storage pool management and best practices in data management policies are also covered. The result is specific recommendations designed to optimize the manner in which TSM is being deployed.
Cost: discounted pricing based on requirements
Expires: October 31, 2005

Data Archiving Assessment
Analysis of the current IT environment to determine the business rules for data governance. The result is a specific data archiving strategy tailored to the client's own needs.
Cost: none
Expires: October 31, 2005

Blade Server Evaluation
Online planning session with qualified Key systems analyst assessing potential benefits and costs of using a blade server for consolidation of applications and servers.
Cost: none
Expires: October 31, 2005

Server Consolidation Assessment
Onsite analysis to identify and assess consolidation areas and prepare formal findings, hardware specs and migration strategy.
Cost: none
Expires: October 31, 2005

Risk Assessor
Security assessment and remediation software with support services from Key.
Cost: 10% discount on software (priced by CPU); discounted services package.
Expires: October 31, 2005

Reader Feedback :.

We value your ideas and comments. Please send your thoughts to Pete Elliot at pelliot@keyinfo.com or call him at 1.818.737.2804.

Publisher :.

Key Information Systems, Inc. (http://www.keyinfo.com), a Premier Business Partner with IBM for five years, is headquartered in Woodland Hills, CA. Founded in 1995, the company provides system integration services, corporate infrastructure architecture for business continuity, storage, and e-business solutions. The company is a leading provider of IBM eServer solutions for the i5/iSeries, p5/pSeries, xSeries and OpenPower servers, and supports the i5OS, OS400, AIX, Unix, NT, and Linux operating system platforms. IBM storage products supported include IBM TotalStorage DS8100 SAN, DR 550, NAS, FAStT, BladeCenter, LTO tape solutions, Tivoli, plus TSRM for storage virtualization and management. High Availability and Fault Tolerant solutions are backed up with a complete range of professional services including education, critical assessments, installation, maintenance, and financing. All these computer resources are available at Key's Business Partner Innovation Center at 22120 Clarendon Street, Suite 100, Woodland Hills, CA 91367, USA. For more information, visit the company online, or call 1.877.442.3249, or email info@keyinfo.com.

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