Reseller Mainline to Acquire Competitor Cornerstone
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The consolidation crunch in the server reseller space continued last week as Mainline Information Systems of Tallahassee, Florida, acquired fellow reseller Cornerstone Systems, of Irvine, California. The combination of the two firms brings together two of IBM's largest server resellers and two companies with particular expertise in mainframes and Power-based servers. READ MORE >

Top Mainframe Stories from Around the Web

(Internetnews.com) The Itanium Solutions Alliance, the group of vendors who are pushing and supporting the use of Itanium-based servers as alternatives to big iron mainframes, are pinning their hopes to the future "Tukwila" quad-core Itanium processor. The chip is expected to launch from Intel by the end of this year and appear in systems by early 2009. IBM, of course, has already moved to quad-core z6 mainframe processors this year and will beat Intel to market by about a year with such big iron. READ MORE >

(VNUnet.com) Scandinavian Airlines was making headlines last week as it has ported a data warehouse that used to run on mainframes to Windows servers using tools from Micro Focus. The project is expected to cut the costs of the data warehouse by 50 percent and the investment in the new platform is expected to pay for itself in 18 months. Rather than writing new applications or finding third-party alternatives, SAS is simply porting the mainframe applications that create and use the data warehouse to Windows using Micro Focus tools. READ MORE >

(SearchEnterpriseLinux) Commercial Linux distributor Novell has about 85 percent of the Linux revenue stream for support contracts on mainframes, and it doesn't want rival Red Hat to get any ideas about taking on this space with any vigor. And to that end, Novell has quietly announced price cuts on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 support contracts on mainframes, which are ridiculously expensive regardless of the cuts. READ MORE >

(Poughkeepsie Journal) Bill Zeitler, the general manager of IBM's Systems and Technology Group, hosted a meeting with the local bigwigs in the Poughkeepsie, New York, area where IBM has done research, development, and manufacturing of mainframe systems since Day One for the platform. With so much manufacturing being offshored in the computer business, Zeitler and his colleague in Software Group, general manager Steve Mills, wanted to reassure New York State politicos that IBM intended to stick around and keep investing not only in the mainframe, but in its New York stomping grounds. READ MORE >

Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings

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

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 >

August 25-28 -- 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 System, and Modular Systems) to present platform-specific topics. LEARN MORE >

October 13-17 -- Las Vegas, Nevada - The IBM System z Expo will include more than 300 sessions featuring z/OS, z/VM, z/VSE, and Linux on System z. There will be an emphasis on the z10 Enterprise Class server, WebSphere application server, DB2, CICS and IMS support, GDPS and Parallel Sysplex support, service oriented architecture, virtualization, and data center energy efficiency. LEARN MORE >