But Wait, There's More

• If you are trying to keep up with PTFs on OS/400 and related systems programs, check out the OS/400 PTF Guides, put together by our partner DLB Associates.
  
  

• October 25
• October 18
• October 11
• October 4
• September 27

• IT analyst firm Gartner is forecasting a moderate upswing in IT spending over the next two years, and then a big surge after 2006 as technologies converge. The prediction, which the Stamford, Connecticut, firm made at its annual user conference in South Florida last week, was hammered home with some strong words by Gartner's chairman and chief executive, Michael Fleisher. "2004 will be the year that companies make the turn from protecting profitability to driving growth," the news agency Reuters quoted Fleisher as saying. "A big turn is coming." Fleisher singled out four developing technologies that he says will drive growth: secure broadband wireless, mobile devices that consume little electricity, cheap and reliable computing power, and service-oriented IT architectures. For 2004, Gartner forecasts hardware spending to increase by 4.4 percent, to $355 billion, and software spending to increase by 7 percent, while overall spending should increase by an average of 5 percent a year through 2007, when Gartner forecasts total worldwide tech spending to hit $2.77 trillion, Reuters reports.
  
  
• Jack Henry & Associates reported impressive financial results recently, an indication that the banking sector is starting to boost its IT spending. The publicly traded company, which writes software that banks and credit unions use to manage their businesses, including its flagship Silverlake OS/400-based suite, reported total revenues of $108.9 million for its first quarter of 2004, a 16 percent increase from a year ago. Michael Henry, the company's chairman and chief executive, says Jack Henry's customers seem more upbeat this year. "The overall attitudes of our customers appear that they are very happy and fairly optimistic regarding the future, which is evidenced by our strong sales pipeline," Henry said in a statement accompanying the financial results. Specifically, the company is finding success in selling software and services that make its customers more efficient, such as teller and platform automation, he says. Also, Jack Henry's check imaging application is selling well, which the company attributes to Congress moving closer to approving electronic methods for clearing checks. The company's profit was up 23 percent.
  
  
• BCD, which recently started giving away licenses of its OS/400 portal application, Nexus, to companies that purchase maintenance agreements, is launching a similar campaign to drum up new business partners. The Chicago company recently announced that it will give new business partners free licenses to use any of its eight software products--including Nexus, WebSmart, Catapult, Spool-Explorer, ProGen Plus, DbGen, Docu-Mint, and File-Flash Plus--as long as they purchase a maintenance agreement. While the free software may only be used by business partners, BCD says partners will become more familiar with the products, and therefore better able to close the deal with customers when they become BCD resellers. "BCD's objective is to expand our distribution channel and have distributors tap into this successful and affordable product line," says Eric Figura, BCD's director of sales and marketing. This model will also help business partners employ BCD utilities at customer sites in consulting roles. The company says it's looking to add 50 to 100 new business partners with its software giveaway. BCD is further sweetening the deal by furnishing contact information on up to 500 OS/400 shops in the partner's geographic region.
  
  
• If you're in the software business, one of the more successful areas to be in right now is business intelligence. That's the word coming from the Framingham, Massachusetts, IT analyst firm IDC, which last week reported that a good percentage of North American IT shops are planning to install business intelligence, if they don't already have it in place. The analyst firm reported that 39.9 percent of North American companies surveyed have already installed business intelligence software, and nearly 11 percent more plan to in the next year. Among bigger companies, almost two-thirds of those surveyed either have business intelligence software in place or have plans to install one.
  
  
• Open Text's pending acquisition of OS/400, Unix, and Windows content management software provider Gauss has been given government clearance. In September, Open Text, based in Waterloo, Ontario, announced plans to purchase Gauss Interprise AG, a German corporation that retained North American headquarters in Irvine, California, following its merger with Magellan Software in 2000. German law requires that 75 percent of a company's shareholders approve an acquisition before the transaction is allowed to go through, which, Open Text says, it obtained last week. The $11 million acquisition is expected to be finalized early next month. Open Text also announced plans to acquire another German content management software company, IXOS Software, in a deal that's expected to be worth at least $206 million. The company plans to have North American headquarters in Waterloo and European headquarters in Munich, Germany. Open Text had revenues of $177 million last year and is facing a competitive landscape that includes EMC (which has offered to acquire Documentum for $1.7 billion) and IBM, which made a slew of content-management-related announcements last week.
  
  
• Users of Hewlett-Packard's venerable HP 3000 server will meet this Friday, October 31, in a group wake held at various bars, restaurants, and hotels around the world. Halloween seems a fitting time for a get-together of those loyal to the HP 3000, which has been one of the walking dead since 2001, when HP decided that it would kill the beloved box in 2006. The HP 3000 was born in the early 1970s and was considered by many to be a superior system to the Systen/3X and AS/400 line. But while the HP 3000 ecosystem withered away and its masters ceased investment, the AS/400 has remained vital, with more firm backing from IBM and its OS/400 partners. Ironically, the iSeries is considered by many as a suitable replacement for the HP 3000, even though OS/400 is not even remotely compatible with MPE, the operating system on the HP 3000s. The list of wake events could end up being a good sales tool for iSeries resellers (at least until the third or fourth round of drinks).
  
  

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