IBM Turns In Its Best Second Quarter in Six Years
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

IT industry bellwether IBM had a tough first quarter in 2007, with its business in the United States slowing down. But in the second quarter, Big Blue's U.S. unit rebounded as much as IBM said it might earlier this year, while overseas markets continued to grow as the U.S. dollar continued to be weak. The upshot is that IBM has turned in its best second quarter in revenue and profit growth since 2001, when the bloom was just coming off the dot-com rose. READ MORE >

Top Mainframe Stories from Around the Web

(eWeek) Mainframe business at IBM is up. That's eight consecutive quarters now. Modernization, integration and other optimization projects are under way at many mainframe shops. That's not to say that mainframe migrations are over-hyped, but at the same time new workloads are being added for reasons ranging from better performance, availability, and security. READ MORE >

(Enterprise Systems) What's the story on the pricing for those specialty-engine processors the Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL), zSeries Application Assist Processor (zAAP), and zSeries Integrated Information Processor (zIIP)? It's miniscule compared to z/OS capacity. Doesn't it seem too good to be true? Some say, yes, and others say, no. READ MORE >

(ChannelWeb) With the goal of increasing its business in the small to mid size market, IBM is in the process of massively restructuring the way it works with its channel partners. Rather than using multiple business partner teams that each call on customers, there will be a single team that integrates the work formerly done by the Systems & Technology hardware group, the Global Technology Services Group, and its Global Business Partners organization. This article is written from the channel partner perspective, but as a mainframe customer you will likely conclude what the impacts for you will be. READ MORE >

(Bus-Tech) Tape-on-disk controllers are one of the products that have helped mainframe-based enterprise data centers lower tape-processing costs. How? In a word, performance. A 50 percent improvement in overall throughput is claimed. A secondary benefit, not to be overlooked, is the elimination of tape duplexing and offsite shipping by using IP-based data replication over private or public wide area networks. READ MORE >

(Micro Focus) Every vendor that markets an application modernization tool wants you to know that performance is the great differentiator between its product and all the others. Is that because every organization involved in a modernization project finds the progress to be excruciatingly slow? The promise of a quicker trip to the service oriented architecture well is a fantastic lure. How quick? You'll have to make the vendor prove it rather than promise it. Be fair. Give them a chance. 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 12-17 -- San Diego, California - IBM technical training tailored for enterprise-class IT professionals will be featured at the SHARE user conference. More than 700 technical sessions and hands-on labs will be presented by industry experts, top developers, and experienced users. Session topics range from implementation of new software releases to in-depth views of the latest technologies. Session topics will include services-oriented architecture, Web services, ITIL, and mobile computing. A preconference workshop on DB2 for z/OS is also on the agenda. If you don't know about SHARE, you should. It has been educating IT professionals since 1955--the longest history of any IT user group. LEARN MORE >

September 17-21 San Antonio, Texas - The IBM System z Conference and Expo presents sessions on topics such as virtualization, security, resiliency, workload management, and integration. More than 350 in-depth elective sessions will highlight IBM System z9 and zSeries and Systems Storage. The sessions are divided into the following focus areas: General Interest and Management, z/OS, z/VM, z/VSE and Linux. LEARN MORE >

October 8-11 -- Orlando, Florida - The IBM WebSphere Portal Technical Conference will feature the latest product upgrades and platform extensions for the popular middleware. Among the highlights will be an emphasis on faster deployment of composite applications, enhanced Web 2.0 support, simplified portal-based solutions, and increased integration with business processes. IBM product architects and developers, business partners, and customers will provide training, case studies, and best practices information. Certification testing will be available and a vendor expo will be included. LEARN MORE >

December 2-7 -- San Diego, California - The 33rd annual Computer Measurement Group conference, CMG2007, brings together data processing professionals interested in system evaluation to maximize performance measured in terms of response time, throughput, and through capacity management. Sessions are geared toward making enhancements to existing systems or designing new systems with the aim of providing adequate performance at a reasonable cost. The courses are divided into two groups. One group consists of platform agnostic sessions and provides attendees with basic knowledge that is independent of any specific hardware or operating system. The second group is platform specific specializing in operating systems such as z/OS, Windows, Unix and Linux. LEARN MORE >