EGL: The Future of Programming for the System i?
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The IT managers cut the checks in the data center world, but the programmers and system analysts do the work to make machinery turn into the software that controls how the business operates. The programmers are the ones who have the brains to actually make the complex code that allows businesses to be simplified and automated, and it is an unwise vendor that antagonizes the programmers on its systems and a wise one that tries to court as many programmers as possible to a platform. The IT managers may write the checks, but programmers have the most influence over what technologies checks will be written for. READ MORE >

Rumored Layoffs at IBM Rochester Not True
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

For the past couple of weeks, people have been asking me if there have been layoffs inside of IBM's Rochester, Minnesota, facility, where the System i and System p Power-based servers are manufactured for the North American market. These rumors are not true, according to sources at the company. READ MORE >

HP Beats the System i on Integration for Midrange Shops
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

As readers of the IT Jungle family of newsletters know full well, I am a hardware junkie and I am impressed when someone does something clever and useful with a piece of machinery. There are tens of thousands of hardware engineers worldwide designing and implementing sophisticated ideas, turning them into real objects, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for what they do. But I also find it equally mystifying why some ideas, which are obvious as far as I am concerned, take so blasted long to get implemented by server makers. Such is the case with blade servers designed specifically for small businesses, and in particular ones that can run the OS/400 and now the i5/OS operating systems. READ MORE >

LANSA Packages Modernization; Leasing Covers it All
by Dan Burger

All it takes is time and money. That's an apt summation for just about any IT project, but is particularly true about application modernization, a project that is on the minds of many IT managers in iSeries shops. For most of them, it's a determination of how much effort it requires, how that effort can be applied with existing staff, and how it fits into a workable budget. Alleviating those concerns is the benefit LANSA believes it has built into a new program it has introduced with the cooperation of Avnet and IBM. READ MORE >