What the Heck Is the Midrange, Anyway?
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

It is a story we hear again and again from the IT vendors: They are going to double down and make aggressive moves into the small and medium business space because the growth rates for IT spending are higher than they are among larger enterprises, at least when those businesses are all lumped together. To many of us, who remember the minicomputer revolution and who know a thing or two about the midrange market, such statements seem a little odd. READ MORE >

More Power7 Details Emerge, Thanks to Blue Waters Super
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The great and wonderful thing about big government-sponsored supercomputing projects is not just the exotic technology that such massive projects cook up, but also the fact that people like to brag about what they are up to inside the small circle of supercomputing centers in academia and governments. Eventually, some of the information about future HPC projects and the products they will be based on leaks out to the rest of the world, giving us a glimpse into the technologies that might be deployed in some modified form in commercial servers. READ MORE >

IBM Drives Home a Strong Second Quarter Across the Board
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

When you get to be a company the size of IBM, attaining 5 percent or 6 percent revenue growth in a quarter in the local economies where you operate is pretty good. To do it two years in a row, across many geographies where the economies are not all doing so hot, is something of a feat. But that is just what Big Blue did in the second quarter ended June 30, posting sales of $26.8 billion, up 13 percent as reported and up 6 percent when reckoned in the local currencies where the deals were done. READ MORE >

The X Factor: The IT Department Matters as Much as the CIO
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Ever since I have been in the information technology publishing business, the publishers who I have worked for as well as the companies that I have run myself have all toyed with the idea of launching what is called in the lingo a C-level publication. Something for chief executive officers, chief financial officers, and chief information officers. The reason why publishers think about doing this is simple: They believe that they could charge a premium for either the content or the advertising that supports it--or a mix, if they use a mixed model--because these are the people who either cut the checks or approve the cutting. READ MORE >