Candescent Buys Quadrant Software as IntelliChief Spins Out
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Yet another private equity firm has taken a stake in the IBM i marketplace. Last week, Boston-based Candescent Partners bought document management company Quadrant Software from the company's founders, Peter DePierro and Gary Langton, for an undisclosed sum. Under the deal with Candescent Partners, DePierro and Langton are selling the Quadrant Software side of the business, which includes FastFax and Formtastic, to the private equity firm while retaining control of IntelliChief, the workflow management tool created by Quadrant. READ MORE >

Cloud Beats Most In-House Security, Says IBM CTO
by Dan Burger

Cloud computing is confusing. It helps if you study it in bite-sized portions. For midrange shops running their core business applications on the IBM i and OS/400 platforms formerly known as AS/400, iSeries, System i, and now Power Systems, there are three considerations that should grab your eyeballs. They are skills, security, and services. You can look at them individually or in combination, but they will likely be a primary factor in whether the cloud is important to you now or in the near future. READ MORE >

Server Sales Chug Along in the Third Quarter
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

There is still plenty of pent up demand out there in the data centers and data closets of the world for servers thanks to the dearth of server spending during the Great Recession. According to the box counters at Gartner, who released the market stats for the third quarter last week, companies shelled out some $12.3 billion acquiring 2.19 million servers in the 13-week period running from the beginning of June through the end of September. READ MORE >

As I See It: Stressing Over Stress
by Victor Rozek

I'm writing an article about stress, under stress. I'd enjoy the irony if it was happening to someone else, but it isn't. I had intended to write this piece all along, but I thought the deadline was a week away. And since I tend to be somewhat spacious with my writing process, enjoying it as I would a multi-course meal, being rushed stresses me out. But when my boss called and asked, Hey, where's the article? the only appropriate response was to murmur a mea culpa and ask for his indulgence until the end of the business day. READ MORE >