SGI Buys Linux Networx Assets with Stock Issue
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Bo Ewald, a long-time executive in the supercomputer industry who cut his teeth at Cray and who was named chief executive officer at Silicon Graphics last April, was also the CEO who was handpicked to run another supercomputer maker, Linux Networx, in June 2005. And late last week, Ewald convinced the SGI board and Oak Investment Partners, one of the venture capitalists behind Linux Networx, to let SGI take over the upstart cluster maker. READ MORE >

HP Puts Out a Four-Socket Itanium Blade Server
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Because of its density, integration, simplicity, and heterogeneous nature--not to mention the account control it gives to server makers because of a lack of standards--the blade form factor would seem to be the inevitable shape of all servers in the long run. But that can't happen as long as blade servers are limited in their processing and memory scalability. The excessive heat thrown off by enterprise-grade processors have prevented blade servers from scaling much beyond two sockets, but that is slowly changing. And that makes blade servers appropriate for relatively large workloads. READ MORE >

IT Salary Increases Are Anemic in 2007, Says Dice Survey
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Dice, which is a Web site devoted to helping engineers and other technology experts get a job, recently put out its report casing how well or poorly professionals in the IT sector did in terms of salary and raises during 2007. And the short answer seems to be that, on average, pay raises were not anywhere near the increases that programmers and managers saw in 2006. That doesn't mean that IT personnel are not in high demand, but that companies are being a bit stingy with the cash. READ MORE >

Mad Dog 21/21: Recovering Lost Prophets
by Hesh Wiener

If you ask computer professionals who they thought were the leaders in data storage, chances are you'll hear names like IBM, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, Network Appliances, and Hitachi. If you asked these storage companies, you might get a different list that included some outfits that were largely unknown in the end user world. But end users probably don't have to worry that they will miss out on some important new vendors. The Storage Establishment is buying up many of the emerging suppliers. This high-profile interest in the new crop of vendors makes all the contenders a lot more visible. READ MORE >