Emerging Markets and Virtualization Drive Q3 Server Sales
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Server lines, perhaps with the exception of IBM's System z and System i servers, did pretty well in the third quarter, according to the latest market share statistics from Gartner. The upgrade cycle in data centers and departments for 64-bit, energy-efficient, and virtualization-capable servers, coupled with raw growth in processing capacity in emerging markets like China, India, and Russia, boosted both server shipments and revenues in the third quarter on a global basis. READ MORE >

Dell Finally and Officially Supports Solaris
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

A long time ago--February 1999, which is like decades ago in the fast-paced computer business--I took over the editorship of a Unix newsletter called Unigram.X, which was mothballed earlier this year by its publisher, Datamonitor. In one of the first essays I did for the publication after becoming its editor, I suggested that server maker Dell was missing out on a huge opportunity by not endorsing Unix. At the time, Dell didn't even have a Linux strategy yet, either. READ MORE >

Transitive Ships Sparc/Solaris Emulator, Partners with Hitachi
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

As promised two months ago, Transitive has begun shipping a variant of its QuickTransit application emulation environment that allows applications compiled for Sparc processors running Solaris to be moved to Linux servers based on either X64 or Itanium processors. Transitive and its partners, Intel and Hewlett-Packard, are hoping to cash in on the aging Sparc/Solaris server base, and now Hitachi is joining the fray. READ MORE >

As I See It: The Sick Guys in Your Wallet
by Victor Rozek

If you've been employed for the past six years, without being officially notified you have been given a 30 percent pay cut. That's what happens when the dollar drops by nearly one-third of its value. What also happens is that your $300,000 home loses $90,000 of its value; your savings are worth 30 percent less, and your groceries cost 30 percent more. As any driver knows, the price of a barrel of oil is over five times what it was just six years ago. One sure sign that the guys pictured on our currency are in poor health is how little coffee they're drinking. READ MORE >