SoftLanding Systems Acquired By CICS Specialist Unicom Systems
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Another cornerstone company in the i5/OS and OS/400 ecosystem has been bought by an outsider. Late last week, SoftLanding Systems, the Peterborough, New Hampshire, provider of software change management and related development tools for the System i platform, announced that it has been acquired by Unicom Systems, a company based in Mission Hills, California, that has carved out a strong niche for itself in the mainframe market and is looking for new markets in which to grow. READ MORE >

VP of System i Marketing Talks Strategy
by Dan Burger and Alex Woodie

Elaine Lennox is happy and excited to have a job that comes with a uniform. It's red and white with concentric circles and a big blue bull's eye in the middle of her back. Most people would describe it as a target. But Lennox, who also wears the title of vice president of marketing for the System i division at IBM, isn't hiding from anyone. She's used the rock throwers, the outspoken critics with pointy sticks, and the heat about below average marketing of the platform. READ MORE >

Who's Using Linux on the System i?
by Mary Lou Roberts

IBM first announced the availability of Linux on the iSeries in May 2001--more than five years ago. With great fanfare, Big Blue has consistently touted this Linux capability as a means for shops to realize cost savings and simplicity by capitalizing on the huge (outside the System i community) movement towards open source software and through server consolidation. All the appropriate heads nodded at the time, and certainly no one is arguing that the System i's ability to run Linux or other operating system partitions is in any way a bad thing. Yet it's unclear just how many System i users have actually chosen this path. But there are some, and they are doing great things. READ MORE >

As I See It: Behavioral Redlining
by Victor Rozek

Ever since people began gathering information about each other, the gatherers have used the data to control and punish the gatherees. King Herod, for example, used census data to hunt down families with infants hoping to preempt the coming of Christ by killing all of the male babies in Bethlehem. For centuries thereafter, birth records were used to determine social status--noble or commoner, free or slave, tax beneficiary or tax payer-and to keep common folks firmly in their place. READ MORE >