i OS Vendors Take Different Approaches to Poor Economy
by Alex Woodie

As the economic tsunami ripples across the globe, companies in almost every industry are hunkering down in an attempt to survive. In many industries, IT budgets are getting slashed to basic maintenance levels, and big projects are cancelled or put on hold. Despite the doom and gloom and the undeniable impact the economy is having on millions of people's lives, business in the System i market continues to move forward as vendors try to adapt to the situation--in particular, the need for financing. READ MORE >

RPG Gets Mixed Up in EGL Jam
by Alex Woodie

Will EGL generate RPG? That was one of the requests that trickled out of the EGL Jam, the ongoing online brainstorming session IBM started last month to stir up ideas from users about where to take the fourth-generation language. While there have been several requests recently to have EGL generate RPG as well as COBOL and Java, the decision to go in that direction has not been made yet, according to one an IBM-Rational program director involved in the Jam, which will continue through the week. READ MORE >

Vault400 Debuts Tiered DR and Managed HA Services
by Alex Woodie

Vault400 is rolling out a series of new disaster recovery (DR) and managed high availability (HA) services aimed at giving Power Systems server customers a recovery time that's tailored to their needs. Depending on the service selected, Vault400's new Tiered Recovery offering guarantees that customers will have their complete System i environments back online within either 24 hours, 12 hours, or 1 hour. That's a huge improvement over the quickest recovery time Vault400 previously offered. READ MORE >

Zend's PHP to be Preloaded Onto IBM i OS
by Alex Woodie

Every shipment of IBM i OS 6.1 and i5/OS V5R4 now include a fully functional version of Zend Technology's Zend Core PHP environment, the companies will announce later this week. The move will make it easier for System i customers to get the popular PHP development tool, which has already been downloaded by System i customers more than 12,000 times. It also comes with basic maintenance and support from the Silicon Valley software company. READ MORE >