iSeries Execs Talk Up the Future of the Platform at COMMON
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

As the largest iSeries user group and certainly the one that is most heavily attended by IBM and the iSeries business partner community, the semi-annual COMMON iSeries user group gathering has always been a place where IBM gets to tell the OS/400 community where the platform is going and where it has been, and vocal end users get to tell Big Blue a thing or two. The latest COMMON in Orlando, Fla., was no different, and the top brass in the iSeries Division as well as some guests from other IBM divisions were on hand to talk up the iSeries. READ MORE >

COMMON Sound Off: Frustration Level Is Down a Bit Among the Faithful
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

There probably is no better barometer of the sentiments of the OS/400 community than the Sound Off portion of the iSeries Town Hall meeting at COMMON twice a year. IBM has ramped up the visibility of the iSeries platform in its marketing and advertising campaigns, and that has clearly pleased the iSeries faithful. But, like the mouse who wants a cookie, iSeries shops want more. And they still have a bunch of things they would like to see IBM improve about the platform and the support it gets. READ MORE >

Oracle to Support IBM's WebSphere with Project Fusion Apps
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Like many of you, I still find it somewhat unnerving that Oracle has so recently and so thoroughly acquired great leverage in the IT business in general and with IBM server platforms in particular. Oracle was one of the poster children for the dot-com boom, and is arguably, with Sun Microsystems, one of the original dot-commers and certainly one of the big beneficiaries of the whole triple boom of the ERP, Y2K, and dot-com waves at the end of the 1990s. READ MORE >

Mad Dog 21/21: New Moth
by Hesh Wiener

Something funny happened when the 1816 edition of the Farmer's Almanac, also known as the Old Farmer's Almanac, was being prepared. Due to some kind of fluke, the Almanac forecast a snowstorm in New England for July 13. And that's exactly what happened! It's no wonder, then, that readers of the Almanac, which has been published continuously since 1792, take its weather forecasts seriously. But you don't need that venerable publication to forecast this: For the foreseeable future, you're going to spend a lot more for the electricity to heat and cool your computer. READ MORE >

   But Wait, There's More

IBM Launches New iSeries Ad Campaigns . . . A Short Meeting with Mark Shearer on Small iSeries Servers . . . Oracle Delivers New iSeries-JDE World Solution Edition Bundle . . . COMMON to Host Spring Show in Balmy Minneapolis . . . EXTOL Stands by New Orleans for Its User Conference in November 2006 . . . IDC Says U.S. Companies Will Double Up on Offshoring by 2009 . . . READ MORE >

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