About Chris Hird

Chris Hird

I have been around the System i5 or it’s predecessors (AS/400, iSeries) for about 18 years now. I started after being retrained by IBM from a Buyer into a programmer! I always loved to get involved with IT equipment and found a knack of being able to tinker with PC’s and get them working long before IBM retrained me. As soon as I had finished the course (9 months) I was assigned to a new project to bring a replication solution to the AS/400, it was called Multiple Systems Software and was written by a Guy DeHond from Hessenatie Information Technology. they were at the time and probably still the biggest shipping / Freight company in Europe? They ran their business on an AS/400 and if the system failed they knew that Antwerp would be frozen by the number of trucks which would have to queue up waiting for loading or unloading, not to mention ships! Guy came up with a solution which was based on an old RedBook which used Journal entries to update a remote system (system 38) allowing the system to be in-synch with the source at all times. Object replication was in its early stages and used a polling mechanism to check for changes, most companies now use the Audit journal to capture change activity. Anyhow IBM saw a market for this solution and bought into the product, I was assigned as the technical liason to the project and had to set up the support and pre-sales group to help IBM sales sell it. I learned a lot at that time, the only thing I had worked on prior to this was a PC, I was given a B10 and a B35 and told to go and set them up(no IBM CE Assistance), install the replication product and get the support process in place…

After a number of years I decided I would leave IBM, I set up my own company Shield Software Services Ltd in the UK and started to sell the MSS product with some success. Then Lakeview bought the rights to the product and moved it away from Belgium back to the US and migrated the technology into the MiMiX product. This left me with a big hole as it was my main income and thankfully Lakeview decided to give us a distributorship for their MiMiX product. I moved to Canada in 1997 and left the UK company in the hands of a friend while I would manage from afar! Not really the best idea for many reasons the main one being freinds and business dont mix, add 3,500 miles to that equation and you know you will have problems. I sold the UK company to another HA MiMiX distributor in 2003, not sorry to see it go after a long period of instability.

Recently

I spent a period of time building my products, JobQGenie, CDG/400, SPM/400,UTL/400 and FTP security manager before taking a consultancy job with Lakeview. That came to an end at the beginning of 2006 after which I decided to work with another IBM Business Partner Blair Technology Ltd. They have a HA practice and are moving into the HA hosting buiness so it seemed to fit. I am currently involved with configuring and developing the Microsoft CRM package for them as well as leading the technical team.

Change of emphasis

I have also decided to put more emphasis into my JobQGenie product again and will be pushing hard to get more market share and developing a partner channel this year. The blog came about after re-developing my shield website and the JobQGenie website and needing some kind of media to help sell/tell my story. If you find it interesting let me know!

Latest

After seeing many companies struggle to install and implement the available HA products I decided to develop and alternative solution. IBM has provided the APYJRNCHG capability for years, but it was only used when customers used recovery services and needed to restore the system then with the journal receivers bring the database up to a level reflective of the last Journal Receiver change. We looked at the Remote Journal technology and tried to apply data using the receivers, to ours and IBM’s surprise it worked. So we have developed the Receiver Apply Program using the technology adding many of the features such as Object replication, Profile Replication, Audits and switching capabilities etc. so it is now more or less capable of competing with the other HA products out there.

Version 4.1 will be shipping soon!
Chris…