But Wait, There's More

IBM, COMMON Bring Back Advisory Council

IBM established the COMMON Advisory Councils in 1991 as a way of getting input from the midrange market as Big Blue was going through some pretty rough times. IBMers would show four- or five-year midrange roadmaps to council members in Europe and North America and would seek input from them about how the market might react. After IBM pulled out of the power dive in 1996 (just as it was beginning the first wave of its Power server consolidation), it stopped funding the councils.

Now IBM and COMMON want to bring them back in the Americas region. The meetings would be held once a year in the few days before one of the two COMMON conferences held each year. COMMON is selecting approximately 15 people to join the council for the Americas region. (Smart aleks like the writers at Guild Companies are obviously not eligible, but if you have the right stuff, you can apply at COMMON's Web site.

EMC Supports iSeries on Centera Archive Arrays

Disk array maker EMC announced last week that it has extended support for its Centera data archiving arrays to include the OS/400 platform. EMC calls the Centera product a "content addressed storage" array, which is distinct from normal disk arrays in that the Centera has special software for indexing files on the array (so that information can be quickly located among terabytes of files) and for authenticating users and their access to specific files.

The iSeries and i5 platform is being supported through EMC's Centera Universal Access software Version 2.1, which can be run on the Centera array itself or on outboard X86 servers. This software, which costs $5,000, is what translates the Centera file system into a format that server file systems can hook into. OS/400 servers are supported in the Centera software through the Network File System feature, which can link to OS/400's Integrated File System. Network File System is the dominant file system for Unix servers and is also supported on many proprietary platforms and Linux systems. The Centera access software can also hook into the Common Internet File System (CIFS) protocol, used in Windows environments, and it now speaks FTP and HTTP as well. Centera arrays can be linked to IBM mainframes, through ESCON and FICON adapters from Bus-Tech.

IBM Wants Students to Bolster Skills with IBM, Open Software

Time and time again, it has been shown that the technologies students are exposed to in college IT courses are what they prefer to implement once they become working IT professionals. The seeding of technologies in schools is, in part, how Unix, Macintosh, Windows, and Linux all developed a cult following that turned into real markets. While IBM loves Linux and Java, it wants students to be familiar with its interpretation of those open technologies, and to that end Big Blue has launched the IBM Academic Initiative to provide universities with WebSphere, DB2, and other software products, as well as new BladeCenter and Power5-based servers, at a deep discount if they promote Java, Linux, and other open technologies.

These discounts on software complement Scholars Portal, which makes 40 IBM software technologies available to university faculty members so they can use IBM code in their courses. IBM says that 8,000 instructors have signed up for the portal to date. IBM has plans to make larger "Squadron" Power5 servers available to instructors and students remotely through a "virtual loaner" program.

Progressive Policy Institute Advises How to Deal with Offshoring

There's been a lot of noise about offshoring these days, and it is going to continue to be a hot topic even after the presidential election is over, because globalization is not just a campaign issue but a fact of life. As is the case with so many issues in America, people are polarized on the issue, according to members of the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., that has been a major factor in pulling Democrats toward the right in the past decade.

The PPI has just released a report on offshoring that echoes many of the sentiments that chief executives of high-tech companies have expressed when discussing the issue. Robert Atkinson, author of a report entitled "Meeting the Offshoring Challenge," says Americans cannot be either protectionist or laissez faire on the issue, but have to take a middle course.

"If we are to successfully compete in the global economy--and to preserve support for globalization itself--then it is time for something completely different," says Atkinson. "It is incumbent upon government, working with industry, universities, labor unions, and other groups, to develop and implement a national strategy for competing and winning in the global economy." Like many technologists, Atkinson believes we can simply innovate our way out of the situation, and he prescribes generous tax credits for research and development and an increase in Federal spending on research and training in math and science. He also wants to make it easier for foreign scientists and engineers to work in the United States, while reining in the abuses of the visa system, and wants to create a National Skills Corporation for training U.S. workers for 21st century jobs. The PPI also thinks that the offshoring issue can be solved by the U.S. government enforcing global trade rules and stopping global currency manipulation, which, PPI says, distorts the economy and creates some of the conditions that make offshoring appealing in the first place. Finally, the PPI says that the government and employers have to establish a new covenant with U.S. workers and their unions whereby companies get to shift workers and jobs around the globe but have to be responsible, and if they offshore jobs they have to give employees three months' notice and training to find a new job.

The PPI report is interesting, and in keeping with these polarized times, it will give everyone something to be happy and angry about. The so-called third way, which the PPI generally proposes, might make no one happy or make everyone equally unhappy.

The Channel Is Pushing More Servers, Says IDC

The collective channel of business partners, resellers, and systems integrators that the big server makers rely on to help peddle their products are pushing a lot more volume these days, according to a new report by IDC. Janet Waxman, an IDC analyst, says that the number of servers pushed through the channel in the U.S. market increased by 40 percent in the first quarter of 2004, while the increase in units sold directly by vendors was up only 9 percent. While they were pushing more product, however, the companies in the channel did not see any revenue increase, while the vendors themselves saw a 9.6 percent increase. This is going to make for a very unhappy channel.

IBM seems to be sharing best with its channel (if aggregate data across all brands within a single quarter can be said to be representative), with 63 percent of its server units and 62 percent of its revenue coming from direct sales. (The iSeries sells predominantly through the channel, but the zSeries mainframes sell mostly directly. The pSeries and xSeries are a mix of channel and direct sales.) During the first quarter this year, Hewlett-Packard pushed 38 percent of its server units itself but took 49 percent of the revenue. Sun Microsystems pushed only 21 percent of its server units directly, and because these were mostly big boxes, Sun got to keep 35 percent of the sales. IDC says that Dell, which has plenty of companies that resell its products, despite the fact that it bills itself as a direct-only vendor, got about 80 percent of its sales and 66 percent of its server volumes from direct sales.

DataMirror Transformation Server Certified with i5/OS

High availability and data transformation software maker DataMirror said last week that its Transformation Server software has been certified to run on the new eServer i5 hardware and i5/OS V5R3 operating system from IBM. DataMirror also said that its iCluster suite of high availability clustering software for the OS/400 platform was also certified on the i5s, as is its LiveAudit real-time auditing software, for complying with myriad government regulations concerning data.