i5/OS V6R1 Announced Today, Ships in March
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Today is the big day. i5/OS V6R1 is finally being launched by IBM. The operating system for iSeries and System i servers, which has been under development for years and which Big Blue previewed last summer, is formally announced today and will begin shipping on March 21. That's just before the i5/OS and OS/400 faithful are gathered for the now-annual COMMON user group conference and expo, this time being hosted down in Nashville, Tennessee. Giving IBM's techies plenty of time to get their presentations together to show off all the new features and functions. READ MORE >

System i VoIP from Nortel Expected Soon
by Alex Woodie

Remember the System i-based voice over IP (VoIP) solution for small and mid size businesses that IBM and Nortel announced seven months ago? While the companies didn't get the offering, dubbed Nortel-IBM System i Unified Communications, out before the end of the year as planned, both firms are still planning to get the product into customers hands, hopefully by the time spring rolls around. READ MORE >

Who Needs a Web Application Firewall?
by Alex Woodie

At the turn of the millennium, IT shops were scrambling to deploy firewalls and other devices to stop hackers from infiltrating their servers. Over the ensuing years, network security professionals got very good at locking down their charges. As a result, hackers have moved onto more productive pastures, including exploiting vulnerabilities in Web applications themselves. This has given rise to a new security device: the Web application firewall. The question is: Do you need one? READ MORE >

Reigning In IT Chaos is the Goal of Innotas
by Alex Woodie

As an IT pro, you've witnessed the state of near chaos that many IT shops call the norm. Projects go off-track like clockwork, budgets balloon to stratospheric levels, and management keeps dreaming up new projects with unrealistic goals. All the while, you must keep the "legacy" stuff running. If this sounds too much like your shop, you could be a good candidate for Project Portfolio Management (PPM), a discipline that Innotas is bringing to the software as a service (SaaS) world. READ MORE >