The European Flavor of Robot

After conducting Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise workshops in Luxembourg and the UK, I quickly realized that customers around the world are facing the same problems. It doesn’t matter whether your server is in continental Europe, the British Isles, or the United States, people have similar computing challenges.

Users of both large and small systems running IBM i must manage more than just the server. They have events on multiple servers that are critical to monitor and automate.

In Luxembourg, even using an over-taxed wireless setup, we were able to demonstrate the power of scheduling to non-IBM i servers running Windows and UNIX.

In the UK, I did a quick head count and found that 80 percent of users were using the Robot/SCHEDULE graphical interface. That was great to see. Back home in the U.S., we’re struggling to get people to use this interface.

I also found that our European customers love OPerator Assistance Language (OPAL) and are doing a lot with cross-system reactivity. One customer had 1500 jobs using a combination of Robot/CLIENT and Robot/SCHEDULE for enterprise scheduling. They were extremely impressed with the new Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise features, like return codes, file monitoring, and viewing an AIX log from the Robot/SCHEDULE completion history.

The trip was fun too, with a great sampling of local food, wine, and chocolate. Between the Robot users and the flavors of Europe, I found a lot to like!