But Wait, There's More

• If you are trying to keep abreast of what IBM has been doing with PTFs on OS/400 and related systems programs, check out the OS/400 PTF Guides, put together by our partner DLB Associates.
  
  

• March 22
• March 15
• March 8
• March 1
• February 22

• According to statistics from market researcher IDC, the relational database market grew by a smidgen in 2002, up 0.7 percent to $12.95 billion across all vendors and platforms. According to preliminary research (which is subject to change and does not include sales of flat-file databases that are popular on IBM mainframes), the top-five RDBMS vendors accounted for 85 percent of total sales worldwide last year. (The IDC data only counts revenues, so, by definition, it undercounts the prevalence of open-source databases, like MySQL and PostgreSQL, just to name the two popular ones that are out there doing real work on Linux and other platforms.) IDC says that sluggish sales among large enterprises made it tough on market leader Oracle and on number-four vendor Sybase, both of which rely heavily on big business. Sales at IBM and NCR's Teradata unit, which ranked number five, were up because they drove sales into the midrange market, particularly for business intelligence and customer relationship management applications that promise to cut costs and drive sales at the companies that install the applications. Microsoft was the number-three vendor and the fastest-growing RDBMS maker, with 15 percent growth, giving it $1.4 billion in sales. Oracle still outsold Microsoft by more than a factor of three, with $5.1 billion in sales, or 39 percent of the total market. However, Oracle's sales were down, and it lost a few points of market share. IBM sold $4.4 billion in relational databases in 2002, giving it nearly 34 percent of the market, according to IDC, thanks in large measure to the popularity of its DB2 variants on mainframes and OS/400 platforms and to its continuing growth in the Unix and Windows markets.
  
  
• According to the industry scuttlebutt being generated by Microsoft's top brass controlling the development of the Windows server family, the company might be doing an about-face and could, perhaps in 2005 or a little later, deliver a server version of the future "Longhorn" release of the Windows server family. Originally, Microsoft had hoped to have long-since shipped the "Whistler" release of Windows, which will come out as Windows Server 2003 at the end of April, and would be releasing the full .NET-enabled kicker to Whistler, code-named "Blackcomb," about two years after that. About a year ago, Whistler was delayed, Blackcomb got pushed out indefinitely, and Microsoft dropped in an intermediate release called "Longhorn," which was supposed to feature a new file format that unified structured and unstructured data. Then Microsoft said late last year that Longhorn would only be a client release, thus confusing everyone, since both client and server would have to be enabled to use this new file format. Now the company seems to be in flux. It wants to do a new release for technology's sake, but every new release is another disruption to what customers are doing, as much as it is an opportunity for Microsoft to sell new software to customers. I guess we'll expect Windows 2005 when we see it.
  
  
• Market researcher IDC has just completed a survey of IT shops, and 65 percent of companies surveyed said they are interested in utility computing. While utility computing is based in part of the outsourcing and managed services offerings that many IT vendors have been offering for years, the game is still wide open, according to David Tapper, program manager for IT outsourcing and utility services at IDC. Tapper says that companies wanting to build true data processing utilities still have time to get into the much-vaunted first-mover position in this nascent utility market. The IDC report that came out of this study was based on only 34 participants, so take it with a grain of salt.
  
  
• So is the war in Iraq going to hinder IT spending or not? That's one of the questions that IT vendors and Wall Street analysts are all trying to answer. The answer seems to depend on who you ask and when you ask them. According to a straw poll survey of 100 chief information officers in the United States and Europe, conducted by analyst Steven Milunovich of Merrill Lynch, 17 percent said they would slow their spending after the war started, and 73 percent said they would not slow spending. (The other 10 percent were unsure.) Some 90 percent of those questioned said that a quick end to the war would not cause them to accelerate IT spending. A survey by Duke University that was cited in the Merrill Lynch report found that 67 percent of chief financial officers surveyed just as the war was starting said they were spending cautiously on capital equipment because of the war. Another survey by InfoTech Research Group, a Toronto-based IT market researcher, did a poll of U.S.-based companies, and under 12 percent of those companies surveyed said that the war would impact their IT spending. However, 57 percent of the companies surveyed by InfoTech did say that the war was affecting their IT operations, particularly in the area of security. As InfoTech correctly notes, IT spending is one of the first things that takes a hit when the economy heads south, and the fact that a larger number of IT managers are not saying they will cut back on spending is probably a good sign at this point.
  
  
• COMMON last week gave an official tally of close to 2,300 attendees at the recent conference and expo held in Indianapolis. Although the actual number of paying attendees was quite a bit lower, COMMON president Bob Boyson had reason to be happy. "In the first part of the year, we were in a little bit of a panic, between the economy, what's going on internationally, and the number of folks who had pre-registered at that time," Boyson said. "But to look around and see close to 2,300 people here, it's just great." COMMON, which is based in Chicago, is looking forward to the fall conference, which will be held late this summer at the Gaylord Palms resort in sunny Orlando, Florida. The theme of the next conference will be "IT in the palm of your hand," and there will be a special educational emphasis on security.
  
  
• At least two computer security groups have reported a security vulnerability in IBM's WebSphere Application Server 4.04 that could leave passwords exposed to hackers. SecuriTeam, a small group in the security scanning company Beyond Security, first reported the WebSphere password vulnerability on its Web site. The vulnerability has to do with WebSphere's weak encryption of the XML configuration file. "If the exported configuration gets into the hands of a malicious user," SecuriTeam reports, "he or she can de-obfuscate passwords easily and can gain access to the password-protected resources." A few days later, the O'Reilly Network reported the same vulnerability. SecuriTeam recommends that WebSphere administrators follow a workaround that involves making sure the configuration file is exported to a directory that is only accessible to administrators, and to destroy the export file after use. It's assumed that the same vulnerability applies to WebSphere Application Server running on OS/400 servers; IBM did not immediately respond to requests concerning OS/400 applicability.
  
  
• Manhattan Associates and PeopleSoft formed an alliance last week that will see Manhattan certify its warehouse management software with PeopleSoft's supply chain software package. Manhattan, based in Atlanta, has joined PeopleSoft's alliance program and plans to integrate its warehouse management system, PKMS, which runs on OS/400, Windows, and Unix platforms, with PeopleSoft's Supply Chain Management, which is supported on Windows and Unix platforms. (PeopleSoft supported OS/400 years ago, but has long since dropped support.) By integrating their offerings, the two companies expect to offer manufacturers and distributors better coordination among production, order management, and fulfillment processes, as well as an easier upgrade path and reduced integration and maintenance costs moving forward. Manhattan says it expects to qualify to begin interoperability testing with PeopleSoft in the third quarter of 2003.
  
  

Sponsored By FAST400

What makes IBM different from Microsoft regarding Fast400?? What is Fast400? You are hearing a lot about Fast400 aren't you? But what is Fast400? Fast400 is a "tuning" product for the iSeries. Fast400 will allow an iSeries server to utilize the available CPW for interactive processing. IBM would have you believe that these interactive cards that cost thousands to millions of dollars, actually add value to your server. By buying Fast400, you do not ever need to buy anther interactive card for your iSeries. For a free demonstration of Fast400, please visit www.fast400.net. Why Fast400? A few years ago Microsoft would not let other software companies build tools to work with the Windows operating system. Microsoft did all kinds of scurrilous things to stop other manufacturers software from working on their platform. They would put code in the base operating system that prevented other companies code from working properly. IBM even had these issues with Operations Navigator. In the early days of Operations Navigator, the developers in Rochester had to scrap early versions because Microsoft did not want IBM leverage on what was proprietary to them. Netscape also had a few problems using the Windows operating system. The result Now we all know what happened to Microsoft. After spending tens of millions of our tax dollars in the trial, the US government told Microsoft that they were acting as a monopoly and what they did was not right or fair. The similarity IBM is doing exactly the same thing to Fast400 as Microsoft did. IBM has changed the operating system of the iSeries 400 to prevent Fast400 from working. In fact this has been done several times now, and each time the Fast400 developers produce a new fix to circumvent the IBM action. Why does IBM do this? because Fast400 takes money out of IBM's pocket. The potential for IBM to make billions from its user base, for delivering virtually no product is tantamount to corporate deception! Did IBM change the operating system when EMC introduced a low cost storage solution for the iSeries? The future The cat and mouse game between IBM and Fast400 is already a year old. Every time IBM changes the operating system to disable Fast400, the developers of Fast400 produce a new version within days to enable it again. Does Fast400 have a commercial agenda? Of course it does. Fast400 is in business to provide its clients with added benefits, which will maximise the interactive performance of iSeries 400 servers. And as we are a business, why shouldn't we charge a nominal fee for that service? A fee that our clients see as being fair and proper. After all, it's not Fast400 that is making enemies in the user base. As long as IBM wants to play "David and Goliath" we will continue to "out" the giant. Fast400 is not running, you can be assured!! For more information, please visit www.fast400.net.