Midrange Shops Shift Priorities This Year
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

With a sharply declining server market this year and relative stagnation expected for the next four years, at least according to forecasts released by IDC and reported on in last week's issue of The Four Hundred, you can bet that midrange resellers are trying to get a bead on what things midrange shops want and, more importantly, need to spend money on. Which is the main reason why the Enterprise Computing Solutions division of master IT distributor Arrow Electronics has just done its second annual mid-market end user survey. READ MORE >

The Best of Times for IBM to Support All Its i Customers
by Dan Burger

The AS/400 customer base needs to hear from IBM. They want to be reassured--not with words, but with deeds--that they are not being left behind. Loyal as they are, these devotees are not immune to feeling disregarded. Maybe not so much among large enterprises, where approximately 20 percent of the users provide IBM with 80 percent of its revenue, but in the SMB space where 80 percent of its customer base dwells, there is a feeling that IBM's investments in the platform are not sufficient. READ MORE >

What We Can Learn from iManifest
by Gordon Davies

There is a lot we can learn here in the States from Japan's IBM i partner community. A group of over 70 IBM partners and independent software vendors (ISVs) has joined forces there, the world's second largest information technology market, to launch the IBM i Manifest initiative for the Japanese market. READ MORE >

As I See It: Oh the Jobs They Are a-Changin'
by Victor Rozek

Remember those tests we took as kids that required us to pick the item that did not belong in a sequence: A) bicycle, B) wheel, C) chain, D) handlebars, E) botox. Well, here's one, courtesy of Time magazine. Going forward, the workplace will be: A) more flexible, B) more freelance, C) far less secure, D) run by a generation with new values, E) increasingly controlled by women. In fairness, I should have added F) all of the above, because Time believes all five conclusions to be true. But given these choices, one item on the list doesn't fit. At least I hope it doesn't. READ MORE >