TechPulse Digest (IBM Power): Analyzing Q1 Surveys With Mike Schuett of TL Ashford

The marketing director joins Andy Wig to look at the first three months of TechChannel's new micro-survey program

Click here to listen to the audio-only version.

The following transcript has been edited for clarity:

Andy Wig:

Hello everyone and welcome to the first ever TechPulse Digest, IBM Power Edition. I’m Andy Wig, senior editor at Tech Channel, and I should probably explain what this is all about. So back in January, we launched something called TechPulse. It’s our monthly micro survey meant to help us learn more about the IT communities we cover and really help those IT communities learn more about themselves. And so at the end of every month, we share those results in a recap. And then at the end of every quarter, we welcome a special guest to unpack those results. And so today we have with us Mike Schuett of TL Ashford. He’s going to fulfill that role. TL Ashford was sponsored the first quarter of TechPulse and I am thrilled to have him on. Mike, thanks for helping us digest these results.

Mike Schuett:

Yeah, thank you a ton for having me. Pleasure.

Wig:

So Mike, first, just to quick kick things off, why don’t you tell me what TL Ashford does and what you do at TL Ashford?

Schuett:

Sure. Well, at TL Ashford, we’ve been serving the IBM i community for, I think it’s about 43 or 44 years now. And we write software specifically for the IBM i that generates barcode labels as well as generates forms. Again, market directly to the IBM i, it’s a platform that we built our company on. My position here is I’m the marketing director. I’ve kind of come through most divisions of our company from sales. I was in tech for a little while, played with a little bit of coding, not a coder, but yeah, wound up as marketing director and here I am.

Wig:

All right. Well, without further ado, let’s get into these tech pulse results. And we’ll just do it sequentially starting with January. For that first month, one of the headlines from that one was I would say the kind of dual-sided AI threat as far as security January was a cybersecurity … Or I’m sorry, that was general industry trends. But yeah, adoption of AI and machine learning was seen as one of the most encouraging trends. But yeah, Mike, what stood out to you as you peruse these results?

Schuett:

Yeah, so two things stood out. I think first off was it seems that hybrid cloud was one of the options and how people were moving to the hybrid cloud. I think that’s a well-established fact now. Most people are doing a combination of running their IBM i in the cloud as well as locally. It certainly reflects what we do here at TL Ashford. You had mentioned that AI is one of the more encouraging trends. Easy to see why. I think it’s fascinating. Obviously we hear about it day in, day out. I’m sure we’re going to come back to it probably multiple times during our conversation. And that’s the IBM i skills gap that seems to be on the minds of everybody in the IBM i community. Also, kind of ironic. Today as we’re recording this, or IBM’s releasing Bob, which is their AI development tool for IBM i. So going to be really fascinating to see how that helps to bridge that technical skills gap on the IBM i.

Going to be a fascinating future.

Wig:

Absolutely. And so moving on to the next month. In the next month, we covered database management. And that was the first month where we actually had a couple … TL Ashford contributed a couple questions for that survey, and we’ll get to those. But first, Mike, overall, as we look through some of the other questions, what stood out to you on the database management results?

Schuett:

The database management, again, it’s kind of what I just touched on in that cloud scenario. It sort of reinforced that. I think it was somewhere around 46% said that their applications were being run in the cloud or their database management was being managed in the cloud. There were a couple of options there. And I think when you aggregate those, it turned out to be something like, I think it was 75% of the respondents were conducting about a quarter to three quarters of their database workload in the cloud. So I think it really stamps home the fact that that’s just today’s operating environment. It’s no longer a trend.

Wig:

Right. It wasn’t seen as … Yeah, it’s just the way things are, it’s the status quo.

Schuett:

Yeah. People aren’t really looking to go for it or considering, is it going to be good or not? It’s just sort of, I think become so easy. I know when we rolled it out here locally, and again, we’re in the cloud and local machines, but our folks had no real issues going to it. So I think it’s probably a benefit for a lot of companies that do it. It’s probably good for the IBM i as well. Allows more people access to it for probably a lot cheaper.

Wig:

And so moving on to some of the questions that you threw at us for this survey, and question four was you ask people to rank their sources for generating forms and labels. Why don’t you tell us, what were you trying to learn by asking that question, aside from obviously, I mean the answers to the question, but what were you trying to get at there?

Schuett:

So what we’re trying to do, I mean, obviously the IBM i platform is what we’re built on. So we’re focused on meeting our customers where they are and providing solutions for what they need where they are. So what we were trying to get at there was to figure out how important it was to generate their forms and labels directly from, say, an IBM i versus a cloud-based platform or even Windows server-based. And I’ll give you an anecdotal story. Not long ago, we had a customer that eventually came over and started using our software on the IBM i. They were running in a distributed Windows server environment. They’re in the food industry. They were uploading FDA data to these multiple servers and then generating labels for their products from those servers. Well, it turned out that some of the servers were updated with the appropriate data and at least one was not.

Labels were generated, product was sent out, the data was wrong on the server that generated the labels and didn’t get updated. So they had to recall all that product, cost them a lot of money. And I think that’s what probably sent them looking for our software and specifically to move that application onto the IBM i because they can manage that FDA data, that database centrally. So you update one database, it carries over to all their labels. So yeah, so that kind of information is important to us from a marketing standpoint and also a product development standpoint. So we know what our customers are looking for, what they need, and we can code our software appropriately.

Wig:

All right. And for question five, we asked about methods of generating forms in label. Did anything surprise you in those results?

Schuett:

I’m going to say unfortunately, no. It kind of solidified our internal research again, at least with our customer base. Most of our customers, they’re using a pretty big ERP system or a warehouse management system. Most of their data is being passed over from those systems into our software for generating labels and forms. But there was a decent amount that are using custom programming, in- house programming. And again, for us, it helps us to make sure we’re generating software to meet that customer where they are and what they’re using. Fortunately for us, our software integrates with virtually any ERP and warehouse management system out there. We also integrate with thousands of in- house applications. So it looks like we’re doing a pretty good job right now, but obviously we’re going to continue to look at that information and make sure we’re producing the best software we can for our customers.

Wig:

Okay. And now, without wasting any time, we’ll get into March here where we asked about cybersecurity. I know there’s impacts on the forms and labeling side too that we’ll get to. But yeah, I mean, one thing that stood out in that was the kind of two emerging security concerns were … The two top emerging concerns were both related to AI, AI as a vulnerability and AI as kind of an enabler of attacks. But Schuett, what else did you notice in the March Tech Pulse?

Schuett:

So it’s interesting. So I recently read another survey that it was published on TechChannel. It was ranking and their respondents were ranking the technical skills gap on the IBM i and saying that that’s surpassing what we think of as traditional cybersecurity as the main concern in the IBM i community. But I think we could argue that the skills gap is a cybersecurity concern from a lack of resources to dedicate to what we traditionally think of as cybersecurity hacking, ransomware, stuff like that, to business continuity, business performance. So I think it’s fascinating that the results indicated technical complexity, not enough time and resources for testing and deployment.

And I think that’s, at least from our standpoint at TL Ashford, that’s one of the reasons that we build our software, obviously, to have a business. But what our software does is it enables users on the IBM i platform to accomplish more, more quickly, more efficiently, more cost effectively so that they can maximize that skill shortage and the staff, the personnel that they have can be more effective. I mean, we realize that forms and labels, it’s a small portion of running a business, but as I mentioned in the case of our customer with the FDA regulations, it’s an important part of the business that still has to be managed and managed well. So yeah, I think the technical complexity, the resource sources for testing and deployment, that really stood out to me because I think our products can really help those users that feel that way.

Wig:

And as far as the specific questions about the forms and labels, was there anything that stood out to you there?

Schuett:

Well, there were a couple things in terms of what was important, how customers had distributed systems. I think about 50% of the respondents said that they were running forms and labels strictly on the IBM i. I think another 30, 32% said that they had a distributed system where they were running on the IBM i as well as some Windows servers. And then there were, that leaves 20% or so who were using neither or maybe didn’t respond, maybe didn’t check that. So yeah, so for us, again, I mean, the IBM i is where we built our company, it’s our main focus. It’s the platform that we love. And so I guess if you aggregate those two together, you have roughly 80% using the IBM i in some form for generating those labels and forms. So that’s great for us. I think it also reinforces the value of the platform and why companies use it.

Wig:

All right. I have learned more about forms and label generation, I think, today in preparing for this session than I ever thought I would. So I mean, I think especially looking at the security question and kind of really serve as a reminder to how critical that is, I mean, it seems like it’s kind of where the rubber meets the road or one place where the rubber meets the road for a business, right? It’s kind of that output. Yeah.

Schuett:

Yeah, I agree. I mean, especially with labeling and barcodes, right? It’s a very small portion, but it’s kind of an upside down triangle. I mean, once the barcodes, if you’re in warehousing distribution, if the barcode label fails, the whole system runs a muck. So it’s a small part, but it’s kind of a keystone part.

Wig:

All right. I think that’s just about getting that time to wrap it up. Is there any other final thoughts you have, Mike, about this entire quarter 3 (quarter 1) and how it relates to what you do or quarter quarterly?

Schuett:

Yeah. I think all the questions from all three months there, I think they were incredibly interesting. It’s always fun to see what real IBM i users are doing. It does confirm a lot of what we’re finding here internally, so that’s promising and makes me feel good about that. Again, our products are built to empower those IBM i users, and I think the survey results are encouraging for the future of the IBM i. And here at TL Ashford, we’re excited for it. I know that.

Wig:

Well, that’s great to hear. Mike, thanks for sharing your insights today. Yeah. It’s always great to hear different interpretations of the results depending on their perspective and where they are, what their niche is in IT and what their role is. So I hope everyone got something out of these first three months of TechPulse. You can also find a written version of the recap for March on TechPulse right now. And in April, we’ll be covering the topic of growth and scaling. So that survey is live now, so you can go find that. One places you can find that survey, one of the places is our TechChannel’s newsletter. It’s called TechBeat. That’s where we put all our TechChannel content in there. You get it on a weekly basis in your inbox. So if you haven’t subscribed to that, please do so. You can go to techchannel.com/subscribe to start getting TechBeat.

And well, that’s going to do it. Thanks for viewing the first edition of TechPulse Digest. Thanks again, Mike, and we will see everybody in three months. Okay, bye.

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