The State of the System i: The Analysts Speak
by Mary Lou Roberts

Reporting on an otherwise stellar quarter, IBM noted in its recent quarterly earnings report that System i sales were down 22 percent, quarter-to-quarter, from 2005. To be fair, it was a tough comparison, since the System i, bolstered by pent-up demand brought on with delivery on several major announcements, hit pay dirt in the prior year, with sales up 25 percent over 2004. That said, the negative 22 percent number left a few of us feeling more than a little disappointment, especially in light of the fact that the System z line was up 25 percent, the System p was up 10 percent, and even the System x was up 4 percent. A little envy seems warranted. READ MORE >

Sun Releases Java Under GPL Open Source License
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

About time. It only took two changes of the executive guard at Sun Microsystems and the better part of a decade, but last week Sun finally began the process of open sourcing all of its Java technology. And in something of a shocker that quite literally left the audience of techies and the press speechless, Sun chose the GNU General Public License v2 as the means of letting go of Java. READ MORE >

Academic Initiative Attempts to Unite Business and Education
by Dan Burger

Before you make the uninformed assumption that IBM Academic Initiative for System i has no bearing on you, your job, or the company you work for, consider for more than one minute what you can build out of a working relationship with a local technical school, community college, or four-year university. This is an opportunity to become involved in the educational process as it pertains to your profession and personally inject some real world experience that not only benefits students but you and your company as well. READ MORE >

Mad Dog 21/21: Stay the Recourse
by Hesh Wiener

IBM is hooting about SOA, which stands for Services Oriented Architecture and which approximately means putting the changing needs of end users at the heart of computer systems development. We don't know where end users were in the landscape before; we had, apparently in mistake, thought they were always the most prominent feature. In any event, this kind of SOA stuff, even if it makes some excellent points, is largely a red herring. It won't reduce software or support costs. To do that, IBM resorts to another SOA, Substitute Offshore Artisans. READ MORE >