IBM Is Not Killing Off RPG III, RPG/400 in i5/OS
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Every now and again, something in the rumor mill gets picked up and distorted in some way that gets a lot of people excited. Recently, I heard from a bunch of different people that IBM was inexplicably going to remove support for earlier versions of the RPG compiler and applications created with them from i5/OS. One rumor had it that IBM had already done so with i5/OS V5R3, and another rumor had it that IBM would do it with i5/OS V5R4. READ MORE >

How the Server Ecosystems Stack Up
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

While the various consultancies like IDC and Gartner do an admirable job tracking server shipments each quarter, they do not talk much about installed bases and they never talk about ecosystems. But box counting only tells part of the story, as we all intuitively know. Gauging the size and strength of an installed base in terms of its aggregate spending--what I am calling a server platform ecosystem--is a very tough challenge. To be quite honest, the data to do this is quite thin. READ MORE >

SOA: A Life-Line for the iSeries?
by Mary Lou Roberts

Unfortunately, there are not a lot of new OS/400 application development efforts underway, either among OS/400 shops or third party software developers. Efforts to get iSeries shops to "modernize" their applications have generally been translated as "move to WebSphere and Java," and only recently has IBM acknowledged that OS/400 shops have not been stampeding to follow that directive. As a result, the iSeries Development Roadmap has recently opened up to include lots of tools and, as importantly, supporting the idea that a good many iSeries users (read RPG die-hards) intend to stay lean and mean with their existing applications that work just fine, thank you very much. READ MORE >

As I See It: In the Aftermath
by Victor Rozek

From January through April of 2005 there were 5,053 layoffs totaling 536,359 employees (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics).

Jonas was 47 when he lost his job. He was a low-level manager earning $64,000 a year when his company decided to abandon its in-house IT operations and move them offshore. Nothing personal, just global competition; the sort of competition that pits the needy against the desperate and renounces any labor force that dare become too affluent. READ MORE >

   But Wait, There's More

IBM Fires in U.S. and Europe, Hires in India . . . Red Hat Releases Fedora Core 4 Linux . . . IDC Says Disk Storage Sales Grew Modestly in Q1 . . . IT Managers Still Sleepless Over Security Issues . . . Seagull Trims Losses, Shows Progress in Latest Financial Report . . . JDA Chooses Koziol to Fill New COO Role . . . SSA Global's Underwriters Exercise Over-Allotment Option . . . READ MORE >

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