Subject: CM First Group January 2023 Newsletter

January 2023

Cautionary Tales


Kicking the technical debt tin can down the road is a powerful temptation with costs to send upstairs to managers who have quarterly stats to report.


The problem: doing so can have serious consequences in the long run.


To drive the point home that these factors can eventually be deadly, we now have the great Southwest Airlines flight cancellation bleep-show in the history books. The New York Times recently published a thought piece on the subject, highlighted down below.


The good news is these problems can be solved with grit and some targeted hands-on learning. The 13th CA 2E CA Plex conference coming up in the spring is a great place to get it done all rolled up into one three day conference (although the grit part is up to you).


To find out what's up with the conference as of now, we've lightly edited last week's CA Communities Winter Update and posted for viewing.


Look for that and links to articles about selling IT Budgets, some VS Code gotchas, and AI insights down below.

Heads Up


NY Times Opinion: The Shameful Secret Behind Southwest's Failure


Southwest Airlines experienced major flight cancellations just weeks ago due to a winter storm, as their antiquated scheduling system caused delays that resulted in cascading disruptions.


Zeynep Tufekci makes the case in her NY Times opinion piece that Southwest employees had been warning about inadequate technology for years before this incident occurred, yet no changes were made due to incentives from corporate executives whose compensation relies on stock prices rather than customer satisfaction or employee safety.


Many factors likely contributed to the failures, but Zeynep's assessment does provide some background and cautionary advice about the perils of ignoring technical debt until it's too late.


Read the New York Times opinion piece →

CA Communities Video


Watch the CA Communities Winter Webcast


Last week's CA Communities Winter Webcast promised lots of new and exciting information about the Spring 2023 CA 2E/Plex Conference, and it certainly delivered.


Early Bird discount pricing ends at midnight Central Time tonight, Jan 31st, so get your tickets now before the price goes up.


In the Exciting news department: in-person ticket holders will be entered to win a coveted ticket to the F1 Finals, Sunday May 7th. Every paid, in-person ticket bought before March 15th has a chance to get their hands on the ticket.


Check out the video and stick around for two highly informative Lightning Talks.


Click here to watch the video →

 Broadcom Support 


Many enterprises struggle with obtaining Broadcom support for their CA 2E (Synon, COOL:2E) or CA Plex systems


If you're working with an older unsupported release, upgrading you IBM OS, or otherwise under the shadow of lapsed maintenance, we can get you back on Broadcom support based on your unique situtation. We specialize in all sizes of customers.


Fill out our 2 minute form and schedule a no-commitment fifteen minute conversation with a CM First Group technical rep.

CM First Support

Current CM First Group customers can access tutorials and submit support tickets at support.cmfirstgroup.com.

Current Releases


CM WebClient 1.8.7 (with nightly builds) For details, go here.

CM Matchpoint ALM 7.0 Build 004. For details, go here.

CM evolveIT 11.3, last supported 10.6
CM M3 2022 Edition
CA Plex 7.2.1 SP005, last supported 7.2.1 (as of January 31, 2022)
→ Details can be found here at Broadcom (login required)
CA 2E 8.7.3, last supported 8.7 (as of January 31, 2022)
→ Details can be found here at Broadcom (login required)
Contact CM First to learn more: info@cmfirstgroup.com

Intelligence