Who is CTG? Backed by 45 years’ experience, CTG provides IT application management, consulting, software development and integration, and staffing solutions to help Global 2000 clients focus on their core businesses and use IT as a competitive advantage to excel in their markets. CTG combines in-depth understanding of our clients’ businesses with a full range of integrated services and proprietary ISO 9001:2000-certified service methodologies. More information about CTG is available on the Web at www.ctg.com. 

RESPONSIBILITIES & DUTIES

• Develop and manage client relationships while maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction
• Ensure compliance to client contracts
• Provide recruiting organization client-specific needs and information to identify optimal candidates.  Define and document each requirement from client
• Meet and exceed established financial goals of the site
• Obtain billable rates that support the site’s profit objectives and allow for fair and competitive employee compensation
• Support and recognize staff
• Conduct timely staff performance reviews and compensation reviews
• Resolve issues, concerns, and conflicts; elevate to site manager
• Initiate and manage the employee separation process when necessary and ensure effective redeployment of staff within assigned accounts
• Present candidates for submittal, schedule client interviews, and close candidates with client
• Assist in compiling information, rates and resumes for new RFP’s, RFQ’s and RFI’s
• Create new business opportunities within assigned accounts by capitalizing on customer relationships, and soliciting business leads from current staff
• Develop and grow new business locally and within the surrounding area(s)
• Perform other duties as required to fulfill responsibilities 

QUALIFICATIONS

• Minimum 10 years’ combined experience in personnel management, project management, customer service and technical support or development in an IT or Engineering field
• Experience working for or with (as a vendor) IBM is HIGHLY desired
• Excellent in customer relationship building
• Competent in human resource management
• Competent in business operations
• Competent coaching, communication, presentation, negotiation, leadership, time management and organizational skills
• Experience with and knowledge of pertinent technical terms and relationships
• Thorough understanding of processes for sales and recruitment and/or project management/delivery
• Possess the ability to be flexible, demonstrates a sense of humor, and has a creative side
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent management and technical experience 

TO APPLY

If interested, please send your MS Word or rtf resume to Pamala Moulton, Sr. Technical Recruiter, pamala.moulton@ctg.com or click on the following link:  https://ctg.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl.  Kindly forward to any other interested parties—thank you!  This position is available on a W-2 basis only; no 1099 or Corp to Corp. No telecommute or relocation options are included.

Please mention the DFW IBMers web site as your source when applying.

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It was a great weekend at Ohio University. Jill, Jackie Urbanczyk’s (current IBMer) niece, and her team completed the 180 mile ride in two days. Phil Krause (former IBMer no longer with us) helped start Jill’s business. The event was very well organized, great fun and very inspiring. Everyone associated with the Pelotonia ride was friendly, helpful and dedicated to the One Goal of eliminating cancer. Many of the riders had pictures of the people they were riding for, some had the names written on their arms and legs, Jill had Phil Krause along for the ride, and some of the riders were cancer survivors.  Jackie and her family are very proud of Jill.  The bike ride raised almost 9 million dollars for cancer research.

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Narrators
The Reverend Dr. Robert Dannals, Rector of Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church
Imam Dr. Yusuf Kavakci, Spiritual Leader of the Islamic Association of North Texas
Rabbi Debra Robbins, Associate Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El
Voluntary donations benefit the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement

Sunday, September 11, 2011, 7:00-8:30 PM
St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church
8011 Douglas Avenue at Colgate, Dallas
Reception to Follow

Free and Open to the Public with Ticket

For free ticket pickup locations and more information, go to:  www.artsdistrictchorale.org  

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This person will be performing level 1 support for the z/OS, z/VM and z/VSE operating systems and for Websphere and Web Portal Server products on z. z/OS includes Supervisor, Scheduler, IOS, DFSMS, DB/2, IMS, and all components supported from z/OS BCP, z/VM and z/VSE level 2 projects. 

Personnel are to work 12-hour shifts during the overnight hours including weeknights, weekends and holidays, working 4 12-hour shifts in 1 week and 3 the next, alternating back and forth. Some overtime is required, usually every other week.

Level 1 provides the initial technical contact for U.S. customers for z/OS, DB2, z/VM, VSE, WebSphere and Web Portal Server, who call in (voice) or send in (electronic) problems encountered. 

New personnel will work both day and night shifts initially in order to learn project specific procedures, after which they will be assigned to overnight shifts, as described above, on a permanent basis. 

TASKS:

Provide resolution to known problems, conduct problem analysis, identify the failing component in z/OS, z/VM or z/VSE operating systems through data base searches, order preventive software service, and provide installation planning assistance. If the problem cannot be identified and resolved through data base searches and analysis of customer symptoms, forward (re-queue) the customer problem to IBM software specialists (level 2) for further analysis. 

If the problem is high severity (severity 1) and level 2 is needed, call-out/page the proper level 2 team and follow-up to ensure level 2 is engaged with the customer. Listen to customer discussion and interact in a highly professional, courteous, tactful and technical manner to resolve customer problems. 

Excellent communication skills and software diagnosis skills are critical as the work involves direct communication with external client customers who are technical systems programmers, and this communication is usually the first technical contact that the customer has with client.

To apply, please go to the following web site and apply using job id #11205278.
http://www.ctg.com/careers

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Act Fast: Special Discount for IBM Alumni and Retirees for the Smarter Commerce Global Summit

The Smarter Commerce Global Summit 2011 ( http://bit.ly/nCCmDM ) is being held from September 19-21 at the San Diego Marriott Marquis & Marina, and we have 100 discounted passes exclusively for IBM alumni who register (Note: Current IBM employees are not eligible.)

The discounted fee is $695.00, which is $600.00 off the standard price of $1295.00. That’s a whopping 46% discount! Click for details and to access the special promotional code:

https://www.ibmconnection.com/network/news/1829/

————————————————————————-

THINK Exhibit Opens in New York City

Plan to be in New York City anytime soon? Don’t miss the new THINK Exhibit opening at Lincoln Center next month. As part of IBM’s yearlong Centennial celebration, the exhibit – an exploration into how the world works and how we can make it work better – will be open to the public September 23 – October 23.

This groundbreaking exhibit offers visitors three innovative experiences: the data wall, a striking, real-time visualization of New York’s systems projected continuously across the exhibit’s exterior; an immersive film that reveals patterns involved in making the world work better; and a self-guided interactive tour.

Located in Lincoln Center at the corner of Broadway and 65th Street, the exhibit is open to the public. Admission is free.

IBM Alumni and Retirees can register for a special reserved viewing of the exhibit beginning September 10. Although there is no admission fee, you must reserve your time slot. This special exhibit is sure to be popular – details and registration: https://www.ibmconnection.com/network/news/1821/

IMPORTANT: Once you have submitted your registration, you will receive a confirmation email. You must print this confirmation and bring it to the exhibit for admittance. For additional information about the exhibit: http://www.ibm.com/ibm100/us/en/thinkexhibit/visit/

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Have you volunteered with a non-profit organization or school this year? You may be eligible to receive one or two IBM Community Grants!! Community Grants provide cash or IBM products to eligible community organizations and schools where IBM employees and retirees are actively volunteering. This is your chance to support the non-profit or school that you care about!!

To begin, go to the IBM On Demand Community website and ‘sign in’. If you don’t have an IBM ID and Password, you will need to ‘register’ and create one. Once you sign in, you are ready to go.

This Centennial year there are enhanced grantoptions to receive even more cash for the non-profit or school where you volunteer! Use one of almost 200 On Demand Community Solutions or Activity Kits to leverage your volunteer time to the fullest and receive more cash or equipment for your non-profit. 

Ready to apply for a grant? It’s easy!

• Log your volunteer hours at the On Demand Community site by clicking ‘Track hours’ in the left-hand navigation area. This is a mandatory requirement for a grant.
• Determine which grant category fits your volunteerism (see Celebration of Service Grants). Be sure to review the eligibility details for the grant. The following grant categories and grant values are available to IBM employee and retiree volunteers this year:
  Award categories:
  • Individual (40+ hours)
  • Team (100 hours total with 3+people)
  • Team – 25 people (at least 13 IBM employees and/or retirees, no hour requirement)
  • Team – 50 people (at least 25 IBM employees and/or retirees, no hour requirement)

Award values:

• Individual without solution $500 cash (USD) or 1 IBM product (not including Young Explorer)
• Individual with solution $1000 cash (USD) or 2 products (maximum of 1 Young Explorer unit)
• 100 hours without solution $1000 cash (USD) or 1 product (may include Young Explorer)
• 100 hours with solution $1500 cash (USD) or 2 products (maximum of 1 Young Explorer unit)
• 25 people without solution $2000 cash (USD) or 3 products (maximum of 2 Young Explorer units)
• 25 people with solution $3000 cash (USD) or 4 products (maximum of 3 Young Explorer units)
• 50 people without solution $4000 cash (USD) or 4 products (maximum of 2 Young Explorer units)
• 50 people with solution $5000 cash (USD) or 5 products (maximum of 3 Young Explorer units)
• Apply for a Community Grant, under ‘How to apply.’ This can be foundat the bottom of the Community Grant page (https://www-01.ibm.com/ibm/ondemandcommunity/grants/communitygrant.wss)as a link directly to the application. You will need your IBM serial number when applying for a grant. The application should take less than 30 minutes to complete.Note:For each grant, you’ll need:
• 501(c)3 form from the non-profit (not required for a public school)
• Signed Affirmation of Compliance form
• For cash grants, a budget which meets or exceeds the dollar amount for which you are applyingIf you need assistance, please click on the ‘Contact us’ link in the left- hand navigator of the On Demand Community site to find your local grant administrator.*NOTE: During the Centennial year, IBM employees and retirees are eligible for one individual Community grant and one Team Community grant. Recipient organizations are eligible for only one Community grant.***DON’T MISS OUT!!!! Apply today! The grant program closes at the end of September!***

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These are good days for International Business Machines (IBM: 171.48, 0.24, 0.14%). Big Blue celebrates its 100th birthday this year — a happy, if accidental, reminder of the zeroes and ones that populate the digital world it dominates. Earnings are rising nicely, as last week’s second-quarter results indicate, and its stock price is up 25% this year to a recent $185, triple the market’s gain.

It’s a story that IBM chief Sam Palmisano outlined last year in the company’s “Roadmap,” in which he described IBM’s plan to deliver double earnings of “at least” $20 a share in 2015, thanks to revenue expansion, cost savings and stock buybacks. The Armonk, N.Y.-based company is boosting sales growth to 3% to 5% a year, no small achievement for a company with $100 billion-plus in sales.

Growth looks set to continue, even if debt crises at home and across the Atlantic weigh on the global economy. In fact, IBM reckons it’s ahead of schedule on its road map, in large part because of its push into the developing world — the source of two thirds of its new customers. Among its big programs there: automating budgeting for Russia’s largest water supplier, and boosting transaction speeds at Mexico’s securities depository. In the past three years, revenue growth in emerging markets outpaced developed markets by eight to ten percentage points.

“The demand in the growth markets is driven by the build-out of IT infrastructures — so the opportunity is secular, not cyclical,” Mark Loughridge, IBM’s chief financial officer, told Barron’s in an e-mail. Indeed, IBM figures emerging markets will deliver 30% of revenue by 2015, up from around 20% last year. Profit margins are also higher than they are in developed markets, which makes for an explosive combination of revenue and profit growth.

“In Asia and Africa, it has less competition and better margins, says Dick Glasebrook, a portfolio manager at Neuberger Berman. Developed markets also continue to grow, as the company pushes deeper into its traditional stronghold, the enterprise market. In the most recent quarter, IBM posted strong growth in the U.S. and Canada — and Europe: Sales grew in the U.K., France and Spain, and the company returned to growth in Germany and Italy.

For the quarter, IBM’s revenue grew 12%, with strong help from the weak dollar; strip out currency gains, and revenue grew 5%. IBM boosted its earnings forecast for 2011 to $13.25 a share, up from its $13 January forecast. Last year, Big Blue earned a record $14.8 billion, or $11.52 a share.

One bright spot was hardware revenue, which rose 12%, after adjusting for currency gains. IBM’s updated System z mainframes proved particularly popular, with revenue jumping 61%. The company’s mainframes excel at managing large numbers of servers, and running high-speed, high-volume transactions. They’re tough to hack and can provide an audit trail. For that reason, banks and financial institutions love them. Servers also sold like hotcakes, as IBM won nearly $2.3 billion of business from rivals since 2009, including Hewlett-Packard (HPQ: 31.39, -1.22, -3.74%) and Oracle (ORCL: 27.47, -0.10, -0.36%).

Even tablet computing — which you might think is squarely in the consumer, not enterprise, arena — is an opportunity for Big Blue. Enterprises are adopting tablet computing, too, and IBM’s products help companies manage the data. “Clients are swimming in data in large part because of the growth in devices,” says Loughridge. Business analytics helps clients attack the data. Moreover, IBM supports devices by building secure corporate clouds that use its hardware and software.

To be sure, there are reasons for concern: Government spending is sagging; much of the growth in IBM’s service backlog was due to currency effects; and hardware faces tough comparisons beginning in the fourth quarter. Yet the long-term trend in services is strong, driven by increased globalization and multinationals wanting to implement best practices across the world. Key to that effort was IBM’s purchase of consultant PwC in 2002. Name recognition in services means some 60% of IBM’s business is now in long-term contracts.

When Barron’s took a long look at IBM in late ’09, we argued that the stock ought to trade at least at a market multiple. At that time, the shares were still below their July ’99 high, a level they didn’t exceed until last October. Last week, however, they fetched 15.4 times trailing earnings, up from 13.4 times at the start of the year — a slight premium to the 15 times of the S&P 500.

That has some investors scaling back. One portfolio manager, who numbers IBM among his largest positions, told Barron’s he’s in the process of cutting his stake in half, citing the “considerably more rich valuation” and “concern that rate of change in the dollar is unlikely to persist.”

Yet IBM is doing precisely what a blue-chip stock is supposed to do: providing steady earnings growth without any surprises. Daniel Flax, who follows the company for T. Rowe Price, calls the firm’s $20 earnings target for 2015 “conservative.” Put a relatively conservative multiple of 13.4 on that number, and the stock is worth $268. Nobody is saying it will get there in the next year, but Big Blue has shown that slow and steady wins the race.

Leslie P. Norton, Barron’s, July 26, 2011

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Most people in the Western world walk around with a powerful computer in their pocket or purse, otherwise known as a smartphone. It’s not unusual to see someone clutching a legal pad-size gadget on airplane flights, such as an iPad, to read books. It’s nearly impossible to walk into a coffee shop without finding someone pecking away at a trim notebook computer, checking e-mail and surfing the Web.

One of the original marketing photos for the IBM 5150, the landmark personal computer that ushered in the PC revolution

The lineage of all those devices, in one way or another, flows directly back to a press conference some 30 years ago tomorrow. On August 12, 1981, IBM rented out a ballroom at the elegant Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York and introduced its landmark 5150 personal computer.

Looking at the beige box today, nothing seems particularly remarkable. The rectangular CPU, with two black bays for floppy disks, isn’t a marvel of design brilliance. There’s nothing striking about the lines, the graphics, the color palette. The 5150 wasn’t even the first PC. Apple, Atari, and Commodore produced so-called microcomputers that preceded it. And IBM’s creation was inferior in some ways to those rivals.

But the 5150, more than any other computer before it, launched the PC revolution. It changed the way we work, the way we communicate, the way we entertain ourselves. That nondescript hunk of metal led to innovations that upended industries. More than any computing device before it, the 5150 changed our world.

The great revelation of the 5150, the reason it changed so much while earlier computers remained hobbyist gadgets, came in the way it was made. Nervous, particularly about the advance that the Apple II was making in computing, IBM raced to come up with an alternative. With time pressure, IBM chose to build its new machine from non-IBM components, a foreign concept for the insular company. That enabled the team to develop the product in 12 months, faster than any other product in IBM’s history at that time.

Making a computer with off-the-shelf parts unleashed the industry. IBM used Intel’s 8088 computer processor. For its operating system, IBM first turned to Digital Research Inc., hoping to license its CP/M. But, in a tale that has become legend in techdom, DRI hesitated and provided an opening for an upstart company, Microsoft, to offer an alternative operating system, PC-DOS, based in part on CP/M.

“You needed that spark of innovation that changed the paradigm,” said Paul Bloom, chief technology officer of telecommunications research at IBM. “It really expanded the market.”

IBM created the model that continues to pervade the PC industry. Relying on other companies to build parts for your technology was radical thinking at the time. Time pressure forced IBM into the strategy. But ultimately, it led to rapid innovation as niche component makers and software developers invested money and energy into improving their piece of the puzzle.

That turned IBM into a master assembler, a role that was easy for others to replicate. And that’s exactly what rivals did. Within two years, Compaq Computer produced the first IBM PC clone, using the identical architecture, something IBM made publicly available so that other companies could easily make compatible software and peripherals. Within just a few more years, the market was flooded with clones, securing spots at the heart of the computing industry for Intel and Microsoft and, somewhat ironically, ensuring a diminished role and sliding market share for IBM. 

Later that decade, as the PC industry began to take shape, IBM recognized the importance of controlling the operating system. It developed OS/2, the next-generation operating system with Microsoft. At the same time, Microsoft was developing a rival operating system called Windows. The partnership fractured in 1990 and Microsoft’s Windows went on to dominate the PC operating system business. Those early IBM decisions–particularly opting for a third-party operating system and ultimately choosing Microsoft’s PC-DOS rather than DRI’s CP/M–ultimately played a huge role in shaping the computer industry today.

That first 5150–made up of a system unit, a keyboard, and a color graphics capability–cost $1,565. Consumers needed to shell out more money for options such as a display, a printer, diskette drives, and extra memory. The 5150 originally weighed 21 pounds without the diskette drives, 28 pounds with two of them. It contained 40 kilobytes of read-only memory and 16 kilobytes of user memory, before adding the diskette drives. Compare that, for example, to the new, sleek Samsung Series 9 Notebook, which weighs 2.88 pounds and comes with a 128-gigabyte hard drive and 4 gigabytes of system memory.

The 5150 was a roaring success, helped in no small part by some of the most iconic advertising of the day. IBM wanted to convey the idea that anyone could use its new computer. So it settled on ads featuring Charlie Chaplin’s tramp character, portrayed by mime Billy Scudder, as a lovable simpleton that could be coaxed into using the new machine.

It says much about how the computer industry has changed that IBM is no longer in the business of making PCs. The company sold its PC business to Chinese PC maker Lenovo for $1.75 billion in 2005. IBM recognized that the PC business was becoming increasingly commoditized, something it had started with the 5150. And it recognized that the once rapid growth of the market was a thing of the past.

“Just as we grow and mature, so does technology,” IBM’s Bloom said. “I don’t know that the PC is dead. But it’s certainly not growing the way other technology is growing.”

These days, much of technology’s growth comes from mobile devices. Smartphones and tablets, already far more powerful than the original 5150, are taking on functions that were once the domain of PCs, such tasks as e-mail, Web browsing, and even document creation and editing.

IBM is focused on even smaller computing devices, sensors, as the one of the next great paradigm shifters. Sensors are popping up everywhere, in appliances in people’s homes to devices they wear on their bodies to traffic signals in major cities. And they’re all collecting data and feeding that information to computer systems to analyze and act upon. IBM, whose great strength is collecting and analyzing data, is working to standardize the technology to make it more ubiquitous and more useful.

And yet, as all these other forms of computing emerge, the personal computer industry sparked by the 5150 rolls on, even if it won’t return to the growth rates of its early days. Ever-thinning notebooks, such as Sony’s new two-thirds-of-an-inch-wide Z series laptop, keep hitting the market. Google’s Chromebook, which automatically connects to the Internet and doesn’t require local storage, changes the notion of personal computing.

It all started at the Waldorf Astoria 30 years ago, August 12, 1981.

Jay Greene, 8/11/11, news.cnet.com

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-20090728-92/how-ibms-5150-pc-shaped-the-computer-industry/#ixzz1VL0zLWwY

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Tom Trotter, Debbie Hurst and John Young

 

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