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Article by Doug Thaler

What is document management in the cloudCloud based document management customers have complete organizational control over all their business files, email, and documents. They can get to everything to do with any client, case, patient, project or personal files instantly. They waste 0 minutes searching and hunting through cabinets or files or standing at copier or faxes. They work, share, and publish at any time, from anywhere with a browser and a connection. They know the business of their business is safe and secure. They can do all this because cloud based document management companies let you decide how to catalog and share their files from any source; paper, digital, email, attachments, word processers, spreadsheets and on and on. Co-workers, partners, and teammates all know where everything is because their cloud portal should catalog and file everything the same way by everyone, everytime to keep them on the same page. Their work is safely locked away encrypted, secure and HIPAA compliant in the Cloud, available 24/7 from anywhere to those with the right credentials. No hunting through their own or others File and folder labyrinths. Cloud storage users aren’t worried about restoring crashed drives and programs – their entire library is ready for business with a login name and password. MARKET OPPORTUNITY:Forrester believes that cloud computing is a sustainable, long-term IT paradigm, and the successor to previous mainframe, client/server, and network computing eras. Underpinned by both technology and economic disruptions, the cloud will fundamentally change the way technology providers engage with business customers and individual users.Global revenue from public cloud computing services is expected to grow at 5 times the rate of traditional IT, according to International Data Corp. As for the hard numbers, public IT cloud services revenue is expected to hit $ 55.5 billion in 2014, up from $ 16 billion in 2009.

IMS – Information Management System – has been around for quite some time. In fact it’ll be 42 in August. Isn’t 42 the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything? Anyway, IMS runs on IBM mainframes and provides an incredibly fast hierarchical database system and an excellent transaction processing system. And in the intervening 41 years and 10 months there have been enormous improvements not only to the way it works, but also to the thinking behind what can be done with it.

Anyone working with IMS will be able to explain to you the different types of database that exist. They’ll talk at length about Full-function databases, Fast-path databases, and High-availability fast path databases. In addition to this database side of IMS, they will also be able to explain how the transaction management system works – how end users can access information and how messages are queued to make this possible. This is great, but what IMS professionals also need is some way of ensuring they keep up-to-date with what else IMS can do. What IMS will be able to do next year when it’s 43 and work towards that.

One easy way is for IMS professionals to join the Virtual IMS Connection user group at www.virtualims.com. This user group has virtual meetings every other month, so that members can watch presentations without needing to leave their office – all they need is an Internet-enabled PC and a telephone. Most of these Webinars take place at 10:30 Central Time and last around an hour.

As well as seeing a presentation by another IMS professional and the ability to ask as many technical questions as they want, they are also kept up-to-date with the latest product announcements (new products or new versions or releases of existing products) and latest IMS-related articles appearing in the press. On the Web site they can find jobs or people looking for jobs and (added quite recently) they can find consultants available for work.

The next meeting of the Virtual IMS Connection user group will be on the 8th June, and the meeting includes a presentation by Patrick Fournier of SysperTec Communications, who will be discussing “Improving the performance, efficiency, and TCO of SOA integration for IMS applications”.

The presentation will look at:

• Web-enabling IMS and other 3270 applications.
• Providing a way to serve IMS application screens on thin-client Web browsers.
• Developing Web 2.0 user interfaces that combine IMS 3270 data flows with AJAX functionality and JavaScript widgets.
• Creating interactive bi-directional connections between IMS and Web applications, eg Web applications that consume IMS transaction.

In a constantly changing industry, the only way to stay up-to-date and to keep your skills honed is join these regular Webinars. And being a virtual meeting, you don’t have to convince your company to fund your user group experience.

If you’re an IMS professional, it makes sense to join the user group and take part in a free Webinar.