The Economy, IT Spending, and Optimism Are Up
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

In one way or another, salaries are all tied to what goes on in the world economy, and things are starting to look up. Don't go overboard when I tell you this, but the indications on Wall Street, as well as on Main Street, are that the economy might be pulling itself off the mat after being pinned for two and a half years. With a rebound in the economy will come the inevitable and understandably wary optimism that might even cause a sustained, slight uptick in IT spending. READ MORE >

Server Sales Rise Slightly in Second Quarter
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Everybody is looking for a good sign these days that the economy is coming back and that IT spending is on the upswing. While the server market is still cut-throat, according to the latest information from IDC, server spending actually rose for the first time in nine quarters during the second quarter of 2003. Don't get out the champagne just yet, since sales rose only two-tenths of a percent. However, it beat the 1.7 percent decline that IDC was predicting. READ MORE >

IBM Serves On-Demand Middleware at U.S. Open
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

IBM will this week use the U.S. Open tennis tournament to showcase a revamped set of server provisioning middleware it acquired in May, when it bought Think Dynamics. The ThinkControl provisioning software is based on the Java 2 Enterprise Edition standard, on Web services standards like Simple Object Access Protocol and Open Grid Services Architecture, and on other standards such as XML and Simple Network Management Protocol, all of which IBM champions. ThinkControl, which is now called Tivoli Intelligent Orchestrator, creates a pool of IT resources that can be allocated to applications dynamically based on policies set by business managers. READ MORE >

HP Pushes Wintel Superdome Performance Again
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

What a wonderful world it would be if the hotshot system engineers at the world's major server vendors would come into your shop and tune your applications, like they do the setups they use for the TPC-C benchmark, which measures the performance and price/performance of transaction processing systems. Hewlett-Packard has run four benchmarks on its Windows-based Integrity Itanium servers in the past few months, each time wringing a little more performance and bang for the buck out of what is essentially the same 64-way machine. READ MORE >

IBM Domino Express Takes On Exchange Server 2003
by Dan Burger

The sword fight between Microsoft and IBM over messaging and collaboration tools for small and midsized businesses is getting a little more intense now that IBM Lotus has announced two Domino Express products and Microsoft is on the verge of releasing Exchange Server 2003. Product features and pricing structures will be sliced unmercifully, but look for pricing--particularly licensing and service contracts--to be a big issue as Lotus attempts to woo Exchange customers as well as upgrade Domino customers who might think about Exchange. READ MORE >

As I See It: The Big Dream
by Victor Rozek

Not everything that is good for the economy is good for the people. No one argues that; we just don't quite know what to do about it. Still, the impacts are sobering if you stop to examine them. McDonald's, for example, spends some two billion dollars each year churning out expert advertising and little plastic figurines to entice children to consume unhealthy amounts of junk food. Although undeniably profitable, their economic exertions have contributed to a doubling in childhood obesity and an alarming rise in Type II diabetes. READ MORE >

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