Taking the Pulse of the iSeries Base
by Mary Lou Roberts

Now and then, it's interesting to take the pulse of what the iSeries base is thinking. It's particularly interesting to engage in this exercise as we head into a COMMON conference, the next one of which will take place in Orlando, Fla., from September 18 through 22. Regardless of what one thinks of the value of COMMON's bi-annual meetings (and opinions on that are decidedly varied), it is, after all, an occasion for the iSeries faithful to congregate, educate, and meditate. READ MORE >

Gartner Says Server Market Warmed Up Some More in Q2
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The analysts at Gartner finished up their box and money counting for the server market last week, and did their traditional handing out of quarterly report cards for the world's major server makers. The market heated up a little bit in terms of annual growth from the prior year, which is an interesting development for a second quarter in any year. First and second calendar quarters are not usually easy ones for IT vendors. READ MORE >

IBM's Business Intelligence Plan Focuses on Partners, Middleware
by Alex Woodie

When IBM revealed it was leaving the market for online analytical processing (OLAP) software earlier this month, it spawned competing ideas as to why Big Blue was abandoning such a profitable sector of the software market, and what its business intelligence strategy would be going forward. As it turns out, IBM is planning to do the same thing in business intelligence as it is doing in other solution areas: Rely on partners for the applications and then sell lots of its own infrastructure tools, hardware, and services around them. READ MORE >

The Source of All Good Bits
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Writing good software that real people can use and that is reliable is a lot harder than writing a decent novel, play, or screenplay--and we all know how terrible most of those forms of entertainment really are. There's a reason why, for instance, the English-speaking peoples of the world have been studying Shakespeare for four centuries, and will probably be doing so for another four. And with the possible exception of Solitaire, maybe Tetris, and just possibly Excel, I would venture to say that no one in the future will look back at the computer programs we create today in quite the same way as we do the works of Shakespeare. READ MORE >

   But Wait, There's More

The i5 Attains Common Criteria EAL 4 Certification . . . Some More Thoughts on the Future Power6 Chips from IBM . . . "Cell" Partners Try to Round Up Support for the Chip . . . Sirius Invests Over $1 Million on Three Innovation Centers . . . Lakeview Partners with Innovatum for Compliance, Auditing . . . Infor Buys PLM Software Provider Formation Systems . . . Zotob Removal Tool Available From Microsoft . . . READ MORE >

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