It's April Fool's Day! Keep an eye out for those crazy office antics!

Remember you can always send us an email with ideas or tips you would like to see in a future iTips newsletter!

Enjoy this week's iTip and enjoy your week!

iManage™: We Manage. You Relax.

Budget dollars have never been more precious, but you still need to ensure your VM and VSE environments are up-to-date, problem-free and performing well.

With the iManage Sys services program, your organization pays a flat monthly rate for 100% of your systems management needs for your VM and/or VSE operating systems. This unique, "all-you-can-eat"  approach means you now have one, low-cost price to ensure your mainframe systems are up and running at their best. Whether its supporting your application or operations staff with daily problems, keeping your IBM and 3rd party software up to date, or conducting a disaster recovery test, it's all included.

We can help you get your job done--whether you turn over a time-intensive project like a VSE or VM migration or even Disaster Recovery planning to us, or you just need us as your backup, our staff with a wide range of expertise will make sure you get your systems work done without worry. 

The best part? illustro's staff is on duty on duty 24x7x365--no sick days, no holidays, no vacations -- and no surprises.

Find out more about iManage!

Interested in a quote? Fill out an inquiry.

This Week's iTip!

A Programming Interface to CP

"Diagnose" is an instruction provided by the IBM hardware architects to allow processor service diagnostics, and its function is largely undocumented. However, the instruction is unused when running in a virtual machine (no hardware to service!) and so was coopted by the VM designers for use as an API. If you open the CP Programming Services manual for your release of VM, you’ll see an entire chapter explaining the various interesting things that you can do with this API.

Diagnose gives you access to system information like the precise release of VM that you’re running, your VM userid and amount of virtual storage, and even what timezone you’re in. It allows you to generate your own system accounting records, manipulate spool files, and discover the characteristics of any virtual device available to you. You can have CP format error messages that your program issues, and even change the language of system messages. In fact, there are around 80 different Diagnose functions available.

Some Diagnose codes are available to all users, and some require very specific directory (or external security manager) authorization, as might be expected.

In particular, Diagnose function code 8 allows a program to issue any CP command and get the command output back in a buffer. Knowing that, you can write a program to do anything that you now do from your terminal. This is particularly useful when implementing service virtual machines. In fact, to communicate with CP all you really need to know is Diagnose!

What makes Diagnose an even more powerful tool is that there are a pair of REXX built-in functions to access some of the more generally useful codes. HELP REXX DIAGRC will give you an explanation of what’s available. You will want to read the explaination in the CP Programming Services guide along with the REXX function description in order to decode the result from the call.

Once you’ve familiarized yourself with what this powerful API provides, you’ll be able to make your applications and processes much more robust, flexible, and secure.

Time is Ticking. As you know, IBM has announced the end of technical support for VSE version 3.1 effective July 2009 - only 3 months away!

ACT NOW to make sure your critical VSE system is supportable by IBM!

NOW is the time to start the process, and illustro is making it Easy for you. Why should you use illustro?

Here are just a few of the many reasons:

• Over 20 years of Experience with VSE Migrations. Our staff has been helping VSE customers all around the world with their migration needs for 2 decades.
• Unmatched Expertise - illustro's professionals have a wide range of expert knowledge and skills. That's why IBM turns to us to provide VSE education and even to speak at their technical conferences.
• 100% Success Rate with Migrations - NEVER Failed! Every one of our customers are available as a reference. We offer a 100% satisfaction guaranteed.
• Non-invasive/Reduced Expenses - Our team can complete portions of the migration on our site so the impact on your environment is minimized. Remote access to our system allows you to test your new system setup
• Costs are Capped - We will scope your migration project to take everything into account, and provide a proposal with a fixed fee. This means we will accomplish the migration regardless of the number of hours required, guaranteed!
• Proven Methodology - illustro's iMove^TM  Project Method for Migrations embodies 2 decades of experience to ensure nothing is forgotten and the process is streamlined.
• Entire Project or Assistance - Some of our customers just don't have any time out from their busy day-to-day to focus on a migration project, and ask for us to do the entire project. Others just want some assistance to ensure best practices are used and to ensure success. 
• On Site Cutover - One of our system engineers will be onsite on the day you plan production cutover, and will stay until all issues are resolved. We're there in the trenches with you.

Call Us or email today to request your FREE project proposal.

With VSE Version 3 support ending soon, our schedule will book up fast!

Visit illustro.com/UpgradeVSE to learn more
or Call us Toll Free at 866-4-illustro (outside the U.S. +1.214.800.8900) 

We Want to Hear From YOU!