IBM's Q1 Driven by Mainframes, Unix, Services, and the Weak Dollar
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

That good ole annuity-style revenue stream, which accounts for a little more than half of IBM's sales in any given quarter, was gurgling and burbling along in the first quarter of 2008, helping to float the company's product sales and delivering pretty hefty overall revenue and profit increases considering the shaky nature of the economy in the United States. And lucky for Big Blue, three-quarters of its revenues come from outside the United States, which means the weak dollar amplifies overseas sales when they are brought back to IBM HQ. READ MORE >

Top Mainframe Stories from Around the Web

(IT Jungle) While IBM provides growth and decline rates for its major hardware, software, and services product lines each quarter, the company does not give precise revenue figures and that makes it easy to try to figure out exactly who is buying what. That's why the major Wall Street brokerage houses that follow IT, the market researchers who make money off IT, and grumpy newsletter publishers in the IT field all try to take a stab at reckoning IBM's revenues in the server and storage space every quarter. Here's IT Jungle's own stab at the black art of estimating System and Technology Group revenues at Big Blue during the first quarter, which includes the clearing up of some obfuscation on the part of the computer maker. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) For a little more than a year, IBM has been using a precise means of marketing its System i midrange gear that targets very precise sub-industries in relatively small geographical regions that may only span the size of a city, a few counties, or a state. Having created the Business Systems division to chase business in the SMB space, IBM is now deploying this Vertical Industry Program approach to marketing across all of its server and storage platforms, including mainframes and their related storage. READ MORE >

(ComputerWeekly) Here's a story that comes around every few months or so--and sometimes sooner. COBOL programmers are still in demand. Here's a short blog posting that discusses the issue. READ MORE >

(Daily Mirror) Server maker Hewlett-Packard is bragging that it has migrated over 50 customers in the Asia/Pacific region (including Japan) from legacy mainframe platforms to its Itanium-based Integrity servers. In fact, according to this report in the Sri Lankan press, HP's sales of Itanium-based Integrity and NonStop servers in the fourth quarter of 2007 rose by 53 percent in the region. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) In recent weeks, the chatter out on there on the Internet and at the water coolers of IT suppliers looking for a deal and Wall Street banks looking for some good news (and visa versa) is that Citrix Systems, which itself just last year spent a fortune to acquire server and desktop hypervisor expert XenSource, is possibly in play. Who is interested, and would an acquisition make sense for Citrix? READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) With energy costs on the rise on all fronts and data centers running out of room and power to add more servers, the idea of getting green in the data center--conserving energy if possible or getting the most work out of the energy used in computing complexes--has certainly taken hold in the psyches of both the board room and the white noise room. But according to a recent survey, few companies are actually doing anything about it beyond thought. READ MORE >

Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings

See our full calendar of events at
http://www.itjungle.com/big/big-calendar.html

May 18-22 -- Orlando, Florida - Users of IBM's Tivoli Maximo and Netcool software have their own conference dedicated to integrating the silo environments that are prevalent in many data centers and improving service management. Included in the event will be presentations by more than 100 customers and business partners and one-on-one meetings with IBM executives, industry experts and analysts. LEARN MORE >

June 4-6 -- Chicago, Illinois - The IBM Energy Efficiency Initiative takes center stage at the "See Blue, Think Green Technical Conference that brings together technical experts and business leaders. Sessions will concentrate on best practices in energy efficiency, innovative power and cooling technologies, and eco-friendly asset disposal services. There will also be technical sessions and hands on labs featuring IBM's most recent System announcements (including Power Systems, Mainframe Systems, Storage Systems, and Modular Systems) to present platform-specific topics. LEARN MORE >

August 10-15 -- San Jose, California - Service oriented architectures and the "SOA journey" as well as server virtualization and the benefits that big iron provides in terms of efficiency and reducing energy consumption are the key topics that will be discussed at the next SHARE user group meeting and expo, held in the heart of Silicon Valley. LEARN MORE >