But Wait, There's More. . .

• If you are trying to sort out the latest PTFs for OS/400 and its related systems programs that IBM has released, you need to check out the OS/400 PTF Guides, which our partner, DLB Associates, has compiled for you. The latest OS/400 PTF Guide is for July 27. An archive of OS/400 PTF Guides published to date is also available on our site.
  

• Hewitt Associates, an IT outsourcing and consulting firm, has just conducted a salary survey of 164 companies based in the United States, with over 40,000 IT employees in aggregate, and has found that even IT workers with so-called "hot skills" are seeing their pay increases slow this year. The hot skills it identified were for IT workers with skills in implementing solutions from SAP and PeopleSoft, and in more generic categories such as supply chain management, customer relationship management, application interchange, Web security, application development, and data warehousing. Among workers in these hot jobs, the median increase in base pay is up 4 percent, compared with last year, and the median total compensation (pay raise plus a bonus) was up 4.2 percent. Hewitt's survey says 59 percent of these hot IT workers received a bonus this year, which on average came to about 9 percent of their salaries. Hewitt also says 23 percent of the IT workers it surveyed received stock options, but that the market value of these options had dropped to 29 percent of base pay, compared with 82 percent of base pay last year. The median base pay for hot IT workers was up 7.5 percent, according to Hewitt, and median total cash compensation was up 6 percent.
  
  
• IDC analysts have put their necks on the line by predicting that a recovery in IT spending, which has been stalled since about March 2000 in most sectors, will be under way by the fourth quarter of this year. This opinion runs counter to the views held by chief executives and chief financial officers at the largest IT companies. IDC's analysts say that no matter how bad this feels, worldwide IT spending will hit $981 billion in 2002, an increase of 3.7 percent. This increase will not be due to IT hardware expenditures, which IDC expects will drop by 4 percent this year, but rather to an increase in software and services costs. This uptick will more likely be the effect of widespread price increases than of an actual increase in spending enthusiasm, as far as we can tell, but IDC doesn't mention this fact in its forecasts. IDC says that we have hit the bottom in IT spending and that the "green shoots" of a recovery are already underway in the third quarter and will be readily evident in the fourth quarter, with 2002 showing good comparisons to a pretty lackluster fourth quarter in 2001. IDC expects the recovery to be uneven this year, as aging products are replaced in industries where companies have been holding back on IT spending but can no longer afford not to upgrade. IDC expects IT spending in the United States to increase 3 percent this year, to $436 billion, with growth accelerating to 9 percent in 2003. In Western Europe, IDC says, IT spending will grow 4 percent this year and 6 percent in 2003. IDC says spending in Japan will be flat this year, with growth of 7 percent in 2003. China, India, Korea, Russia, South Africa, Poland, and the Philippines were identified as hot growth areas for next year, but these markets do not yet comprise a major portion of IT spending.
  
  
• Kisco Information Systems is giving away free OS/400 software. The company announced last week that it has added a new section to its Web site where anybody can go to download free AS/400 and iSeries utilities. The new section, which Kisco calls Free Stuff, currently contains two OS/400 utilities the company previously sold as licensed programs, but Kisco plans to add more free utilities in the future. The first freed utility, SMARTTN, is a desktop organizing utility for terminal session users that contains a personal phone list, a calendar, a note pad, and a calculator. The second freed utility, CPYFSEL, is a variant of IBM's CPYF utility that allows technicians to make file copies based on field selection rules that include complex and/or logic, and is less CPU intensive than IBM's CPYF, according to the company. Kisco says it will never charge maintenance fees for Free Stuff utilities and isn't requiring server serial numbers, signatures, or software keys to gain access to the software.
  
  
• Lakeview Technology and Data Junction have formed a strategic alliance to integrate their respective products to improve Data Junction customers' decision-making capabilities during bulk extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) operations. As part of the deal, Lakeview's OmniReplicator data replication software will be offered to users of Data Junction's extract and transformation software. By using OmniReplicator's ability to replicate only the data that has been changed, Data Junction customers will have quicker access to time-sensitive information.
  
  
• In other LakeviewTechnology news, the Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois, company announced that it will be hosting a joint Webcast with IBM on Wednesday to discuss implementing managed availability in a single iSeries environment. By using OS/400's logical partitioning (LPAR) capabilities with high availability middleware such as Lakeview's MIMIX, companies can reduce the amount of planned downtime they experience by setting up a switched logical partitioning environment. Chris Bartley, Lakeview's director of MIMIX solution development, will be joined by Eric Hess of IBM's Rochester, Minnesota, labs. All participants will be entered in a drawing for a free DVD player. To register for the 10 a.m. CT event, go to Lakeview's Public Events page.
  
  

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