IBM's Transitive Buy Presents Interesting Server Options
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Here's a story you've heard a bunch of times: IBM liked the software so much, it bought the company. And so the story ran again last week, when Big Blue bought software emulation specialist Transitive for an undisclosed sum of money. Transitive makes a bit of software called QuickTransit, which allows applications created for one chip to be encapsulated, and run on completely different architectures. READ MORE >

Midrange Shops Not As Protected from Disaster As They Think, Vision Finds
by Alex Woodie

System i and System p shops have an irrational faith in the capabilities of their disaster recovery systems, and could be in for a harsh reality check if their servers go down unexpectedly. This is according to a report issued last week by high availability software provider Vision Solutions, which looks at the DR and HA technologies used by these organizations and the expectations placed upon them. READ MORE >

Public Safety Works on Information Sharing, May Go for SaaS
by Dan Burger

Data integration problems plague a lot of organizations, but this curse may be best illustrated by examining the grief it brings to law enforcement agencies. It's here that information sharing can come down to life and death situations without that claim setting off the hyperbole alarms. Improving data integration internally as well as among federal, state, county, and local agencies is a law enforcement priority and there are numerous initiatives and best practices paving the way. The IBM AS/400, iSeries, and System i are sometimes in the line of fire. READ MORE >

As I See It: Final Options
by Victor Rozek

Let's face it: if a couple trillion dollars in bailouts didn't fix the economy, it's probably in worse shape than even gloomy analysts want to admit. For one thing, if the economy wasn't already on life support, we wouldn't have found out about it until after the election. We all know the trends: a quarter million jobs lost in October alone, hundreds of businesses closing, and the Big Three auto makers trolling the halls of Congress with a sign reading 'Will work for $25 billion.' READ MORE >