Growing Businesses, Upgrades Drive IT Hiring in Q4
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Fears of recession subsided last week thanks to a mediocre jobs report from the U.S. Labor Department that said employers added 110,000 jobs in September and 89,000 jobs in August, despite a slowdown in the construction and manufacturing sectors and jitters in the stock and mortgage markets. People were cheered last week--particularly on Wall Street--because jobs grew even though the economy seems to be slowing down a bit. So far, if surveys by Robert Half Technology are any indication, IT managers are still optimistic about the hiring they planned to do in the remaining three months of 2007. READ MORE >

Top Mainframe Stories from Around the Web

(zJournal) That giant sucking sound coming from the data center can be traced to the seemingly insatiable demand for power consumption. Servers are hogging about 40 percent and storage is right behind at more than 35 percent. How are you devising a savings plan that will pay off? If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Please take that as more than just a slogan. READ MORE >

(Information Week) Extending COBOL applications by connecting them with apps created in C, C++, and C# has been the hallmark of Tuxedo software, a company in the middle of mainframe migration projects. The newly released Tuxedo Version 10 adds several new features for companies that are moving to a SOA world and leaving the monolithic mainframe behind. READ MORE >

(CNet) Server virtualization fixes the inadequacy of a data center that runs dozens or even hundreds of X64 servers at 10 percent utilization by consolidating them on a single server running at 80 percent utilization. For those of you with a focus on IT assets and costs, virtualization is your stairway to heaven. But which platform do you choose for your virtualization? READ MORE >

(nuBridges) Securing data on mainframes when that data is being passed around via the Internet is not something to be taken lightly. You can't do business electronically without security and one way to handle that is through data encryption at the field and file level. READ MORE >

Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings

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

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 >

October 15-18 -- Dallas, Texas - More than 140 educational sessions, plus networking opportunities with IT managers, storage architects, and infrastructure professionals, and a vendor expo are combined at Storage Networking World, an event hosted by ComputerWorld. Guest speakers include Frank Abagnale, fraud and identity theft expert; James Onalfo, CIO of the New York City Police Department; Steve Fastook, Vice President of Technical and Commercial Operations at CNBC; Brian Cobb, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Systems Management at Fannie Mae, Parker Mabry, Senior Vice President and Manager of Network Systems Engineering at Morgan Keegan; and Joe Lacik, Senior Vice President, of Information Services at Aviall Services. LEARN MORE >

October 16 -- Cincinnati, Ohio - Linking business process management and service oriented architecture to obtain long-term flexibility is the focus of this half-day session featuring IBM executives and industry analysts. Case studies describing how companies have achieved productivity gains and cost reductions will be highlighted along with advice on how to maximize return on investment. 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 >