As the winner of the IBM Beacon Award for 2010, GoMidjets CEO, Tamir Gefen, will talk about using DeveloperWorks for business development and promoting new products.

Mr. Gefen’s presentation forms a part of “When Collaboration Gets Rational” professional track.

When: Tuesday, September 14^th at 13:00.

Where: Avenue Convention Center in Airport City.

About the Event

The Annual IBM Israel event features the best in lectures, announcements and IBM experts from Israel and abroad, as well as case studies from customers who implemented IBM solutions in their organization. The adjacent exhibition will present innovative solution from IBM and its business partners, including demos and technologies for smart retail.

More details: http://www-05.ibm.com/il/events/ibmsymposium2010/index.html

The main benefit provided by ClearCheck is a reduced risk of major failures and downtime.

Use this calculator to find out what how much VOBs downtime can cost in your organization. Compare this cost with the price of ClearCheck to support buying decisions.

Cost of VOBs Downtime

No. of developers working on the project: ___

Developer hourly fee average: ___

Administrator hourly fee average: ___

Money saved should be calculated as follows:

No. of developers X downtime hours (typically a full work day) X avg. hourly fee + [ Administrator's time for fixing problems X avg. hourly fee ] .

For instance: assuming you have 30 developers at avg. hourly fee of $50/hour, and a major problems takes a full work day (9 hours), so the cost is

30 * 50 * 9 + 50 * 9 = $ 13,950

1.    Protect R&D’s Most Valuable Asset

Business continuity is not just a buzzword. Time lost on fixing ClearCase problems wastes time, money and energy which directly affect the company’s bottom line.

ClearCheck implements:

• Accurate reports – covers all possible errors so you know whether VOBs are healthy or not, and if not, what is wrong with them.
• Preventive maintenance – identify and fix problems before they affect the work of end-users.  Take a proactive support approach!

Many organizations experience 1-2 major ClearCase failures annually which may cost tens of thousands of dollars . Use our ROI Calculator to find out how much your organization stands to lose in case of a major failure.

Bottom line: high quality protection of a core asset – business continuity.

2.    Save Time on a Routine Task

Checking that VOBs are functioning well takes a lot of time and effort:

• Study IBM’s recommendations for checks
• Master checking tools and implement checks
• Running checks takes an hour or more.

Working with ClearCheck ensures that the VOBs are always checked to the highest industry standard, no matter how busy the administrator team is.

Bottom line: the administrator can focus on core tasks – improved productivity.

3.    Can’t you do it Yourself?

Over 2 years of research and development have gone into creating the current version of ClearCheck. Yes, administrators can write scripts, but they will lack crucial features, including:

• Actionable reports: ClearCheck reports clearly list problems and issues, unlike the unsorted, undifferentiated data returned by ClearCase checks
• Software updates: IBM constantly adds more checks and possibilities to its recommendations. Only a dedicated team can keep track and update the product accordingly.
• Performance: some checks require downtime. ClearCheck significantly reduces downtime and even allows the check to run online in certain configurations
• Problem solving: for each problem found, ClearCheck recommends a solution with link to IBM documentation

Bottom line: less investment, better product – money saving.

TestPro will be attending the IBM Innovation 2010 conference in Sydney on the 21st July 2010. TestPro  are representing GoMidjets and will have a stand where an attendee can come and discuss change management, testing and requirements.

TestPro’s Director, Scott Marchant will be presenting in the Quality stream about Automated Test Frameworks and their implementation on a client site.

The new ClearCheck version, V1.7, suggests a simpler procedure for installing ClearCheck in order to ensure that your ClearCase environment is healthy. It takes only 3 minutes to install and receive a preliminary report!

Here are the 4 steps to follow after you download ClearCheck (To download the latest version: http://gomidjets.com/download.php?did=1)

1. Select your VOB server access: local (for Windows server) or remote (for Linux or UNIX) server. In case of remote server, please enter hostname, account name that can access VOBs, password, press “apply”

Select server tab (click to enlarge)

2. Select the VOBs that you want to be checked

VOBs tab (click to enlarge)

3. Select a view tag (ClearCheck automatically recognizes all views) to be a view-context for “checkvob” test.

4. Press the “Execute checks now” button.

checkvob tab (click to enlarge)

Now ClearCheck will start working. Status messages will appear in the right bottom corner of your screen. Please be patient. The checks usually run for a few minutes, depending on the amount of VOBs that you’ve selected and their size.

After the checks are done, your browser will open automatically, displaying the final report. If any errors are found, there will be a blue highlighted line at the end of each error description, explaining how to solve the error. you will see a highlighted line at the end of each error, describing you how to solve that error.

After checks are done,  your browser will be opened automatically with the final report. If you find any error, you will see a highlighted line in blue at the end of the error, describing you how to solve that error.

That’s all!

Remember, it’s a preliminary report. In order to gain maximum effect of ClearCheck and ClearCase checks, please read the full manual (it’s part of your installation kit) or consult our support team: support@gomidjets.com

GoMidjets has managed to reach target audience in large enterprises through IBM’s DeveloperWorks network and social media, winning the Beacon Award for outstanding contribution to the developers community.

Rome, May 18th. Tamir Gefen, CEO of GoMidjets, won the IBM Beacon Award for outstanding contribution to DeveloperWorks, IBM’s network for developers and IT professionals. The marketing strategy of GoMidjets, a vendor specializing in IBM Rational plugins, focuses on reaching key position holders through social media and developing a highly targeted install base for its niche products.

“The company was founded in social media,” says Mr. Gefen. “Two years ago I opened a professional blog, as a way to share knowledge and connect to other professionals working with IBM products. One night I shared a script I wrote on my blog, and was amazed at how many people downloaded it with no other marketing except my blog post. It became clear that a good solution can get a wide audience through social media tools.”
GoMidjet’s clients are large enterprises who have a large R&D team. Reaching administrators and managers in such organizations is considered especially difficult through traditional marketing efforts. Yet GoMidjets has managed to reach an install base of thousands of users in organizations such as federal agencies, Oracle, Motorola, Thales, STMicroElectronics, Ness, Comverse and many more.
Today, GoMidjets markets its solutions in IBM DeveloperWorks, LinkedIn, Twitter, professional forums and is considering entering Facebook. The company has 2 active blogs in English: Tamir Gefen on ALM, and GoMidjet’s corporate blog.
“The key is to reach a very specific niche and work with the community to provide value,” Mr. Gefen explains, “we don’t just develop products and drop them into the marketplace. We listen to the pains of users and administrators, and use it as a starting point for new features and products. In this way we ensure that our plugins solve real problems for real people. We have also shared new features and beta versions with connections on social media, and the feedback has been invaluable.”

GoMidjets has developed three productivity plugins for IBM Rational ClearCase:
ClearEnv – Automatically installs development environments in ClearCase, with a special focus on  heterogeneous systems, Agile methodology, distributed environments, and more.
ClearCheck – Automatically checks database health in development environments, contributing to business continuity and risk mitigation.
CompBL – Advanced version comparison for better control of the R&D process and gathering Business Intelligence (BI) about development processes.
All products are seamlessly integrated with ClearCase environments, compliant with UNIX/ Linux and Windows, and certified by the IBM Innovation Lab.

About GoMidjets
GoMidjets provides products and services for configuration management (CM) and application life-cycle management (ALM). The company specializes in IBM Rational products and heterogeneous environments and recently won the IBM Beacon Award.
GoMidjets was founded in 2009 by Tamir Gefen, a recognized expert with over a decade of experience. Mr. Gefen managed CM and ALM projects at the Israeli Air Force, an international professional services company, and large enterprises.

Come see us live in the US and Italy

The summer is nearly here, and GoMidjets going on the road. We’re going to be at three major events over May and June.

If you would like to meet the people behind the ClearCase productivity plug-ins, ask for a meeting through this link, and we would love to meet you in person. We’re going to be attending:

• IBM Information on Demand 2010 conference, Rome Italy, May 19th-20th

• IBM Innovate 2010 conference, Orlando FL, June 6th-10th

• NY Roadshow, New York, June 14^th-16^th

Be in touch

If you’re going to be at any of these events or locations, we’d really love to meet up. Feel free to schedule a meeting: http://gomidjets.com/register_innovate

dbcheck is the most important maintenance check provides by IBM Rational. According to IBM, it covers about 80% of the corruptions that can occur.

ClearCheck and ClearCase enable you to run dbcheck in three ways:

1. Run it on the VOBs themselves
2. Run it on a VOBs backup copy that is stored on the VOB server or another server
3. Run it on a VOBs backup copy that is stored on a storage (filer) machine: NetApp, EMC Celerra, Sun storage, IBM etc.

The first way requires locking the VOBs for writing. That means that no one will be able apply changes while the dbcheck is running.
The other two ways do not require locking the VOBs, and are considered to be the best practices for avoiding VOBs downtime!

ClearCase dbcheck

To download trial version of ClearCheck: http://gomidjets.com/download.php?did=1

The Software and Services Department at the IBM Haifa Research Lab (HRL) in Israel, cordially invites you to a full-day seminar on Programming Languages and Development Environments (PLDE), to be held on Wednesday, April 14, 2010 .

The seminar will take place in the auditorium of the HRL site on the University of Haifa campus, from 9:00 to 17:30. Lunch and light refreshments will be served. Participation is free .

During the day, we, the GoMidjets team, will show our automated solutions for IBM Rational ClearCase, as well as demonstrating our solution for building work environments automatically, ClearEnv ( http://bit.ly/cnqv2w ), in one of the sessions.

Registration (by April 11):
https://www.research.ibm.com/haifa/Workshops/plde2010/index.shtml

Program: https://www.research.ibm.com/haifa/Workshops/plde2010/program.shtml

See you there!

On March 23^rd GoMidjets’ seminar “Accelerating development and CM processes by automation“ took host at IBM Israel.

The turn-out for the event was high.  In less than two days all the seats for the seminar were booked. This was achieved by using only selected social media platforms (and not all intentionally). 35 people signed up to the seminar and 26 attended in person, coming from various sectors and companies.

During the first part of the seminar I lectured on the topic of “Automation in development processes: why, when and how”. Presentation slides are available for download, but do not yet include the detailed explanations, which will be added soon to this blog. Sign up here for updates.

In the lecture, I used a practical example from the ClearCase world: a trigger that announces a new recommended baseline. That trigger combines all discussed issues.

The Presentation is available for download here: http://bit.ly/92PmY0

During the second part of the seminar we examined common problems in Rational ClearCase which can be solved with automation, and suggested our solutions for the following problems:

1. ClearCase VOBs health check
2. ClearCase environments installation
3. ClearCase Version comparison

To read about our solutions enter the links above.

To download presentation slides of the common ClearCase problems: http://bit.ly/9vy8VE

To follow up the last successful event we intend on organizing future professional seminars – sign up here for updates.

I’d like to thank the participants and all those who lent a hand, GoMidjets employees and IBM workers, to produce this event.

View photos from the seminar:

Automation Seminar

Automation seminar 2

Automation Seminar 3