Intel's IA-64 McKinley Chip Debuts for Guild Companiess
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

As we anticipated early last month, Intel announced its "McKinley" Itanium 2 processors this week. While Intel has announced the processors and a few vendors have announced that they are taking orders for workstations and servers that use the McKinley processors, it doesn't look like the McKinley chips will ship in appreciable volumes until August. The McKinley chips are a big improvement over the first-generation "Merced" Itanium chips, but they are coming to market almost a year late. READ MORE >

Microsoft's U.S. Sales Force Gets Industry-Specific Makeover
by Alex Woodie

Microsoft has long had aspirations to take a bigger chunk of the enterprise software space, but has lacked enough sales people with enterprise expertise to do so. Now, Microsoft is building out and reorganizing its sales force around 12 specific industries, such as retail and healthcare, while at the same time, adding 450 new salespeople--the company's biggest sales force increase in more than ten years--at a time when most software companies are cutting back. READ MORE >

Marathon, Key Offer Fault Tolerant Windows Servers
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

If the only server that you have ever used has run a variant of Microsoft's Windows operating system, then you probably do not know that an operating system can be a lot more reliable than Windows. But many midrange shops do know, and that is why a high-availability solution for Windows, developed by Marathon Technologies and implemented by high-availability specialist Key Information Systems, will probably appeal to the majority of midrange shops that have Windows servers doing at least some of their work. READ MORE >

Kronos Formally Enters HR and Payroll Software Market
by Alex Woodie

As expected, Kronos has announced the immediate availability of Workforce HRMS, its new suite of Web-based payroll and human resources software that runs on Microsoft technologies. The move, made as we were going on holiday, marks Kronos' formal entry into the payroll and human resources software market, which Kronos has characterized as extremely fragmented. The aggressive Chelmsford, Massachusetts, company announced its intentions to enter--and in fact, to dominate--the midrange portion of this market last year. READ MORE >

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We value your feedback and your insights into the OS/400 market. Feel free to drop us a letter to the editor and we will post them in a reader feedback column associated with this newsletter. READ MORE >