IBM Rejiggers and Broadens i5 Capacity BackUp Edition
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Just a little over three years ago, when IBM was rolling out the final phases of its first-generation of Power5-based "Squadron" servers, the company began talking about two new kinds of OS/400 servers. Both machines, the Capacity BackUp (CBU) Edition and High Availability (HA) Edition sought to offer standardized iSeries platforms with built-in low prices for customers who wanted to do high availability clustering and offsite disaster recovery. Last week, after much input from customers, IBM substantially changed how it packages and sells the CBU Edition. READ MORE >

Software Hungry IBM Eats ECM Rival FileNet for $1.6 Billion
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

In the past few weeks, IBM's Software Group has been on an acquisition binge, and last week it was still hungry. And so, Big Blue shelled out $1.6 billion in cash to acquire FileNet, one of its most significant rivals in the increasingly important enterprise content management (ECM) software business. With the acquisition, IBM is now better positioned to take on EMC, which bought its way into this market when it ate Documentum in October 2003 for $1.6 billion, and Open Text, which just bought rival Hummingbird for $489 million two weeks ago. READ MORE >

The System i Is the Top Banana for Fruit Producers
by Mary Lou Roberts

As we are biting into a pear, munching on cherry cheesecake, or pouring apple juice for the kids, most of us do not wonder how that fruit gets from the fields where it is grown--in California, Florida, Argentina, or Chile--to our dining room tables. And how many of us have ever stopped to ponder how, on those rare occasions when there's a product recall because of a bad apple in the barrel, how anyone can possibly identify where the banana that wound up in that banana crème pie came from? In many instances, the technology that powers the companies that grow, package, and distribute the produce we eat is an AS/400, an iSeries, or an i5. READ MORE >

As I See It: Biology and Technology--the Uneasy Union
by Victor Rozek

Legend has it that the King of France had a problem. Too many people to kill and too little time. So he commissions a fellow named Joseph-Ignace to invent an expedient way of dispatching the assorted criminals, heretics, and revolutionaries who are deemed enemies of the state. Joseph-Ignace sets to work and, using a Scottish apparatus as a model, creates a device originally called the Louison (no doubt a sardonic tribute to Louis XVI), and presents it to the King. But, alas, Louis is busy with affairs of state and the contraption is moved to some neglected corner of Versailles where it and Joseph-Ignace are mightily ignored. READ MORE >