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But Wait, There's More
HP Deep Sixes Itanium Workstations
Hewlett-Packard quietly withdrew its Itanium-based workstation line from marketing on September 1, and it spent last Friday trying to do damage control with the IT press as the word got out. Since the PA-8800 is either the final or the penultimate PA-RISC processor in HP's roadmap, dropping the zx2000 and zx6000 workstations, which use Itanium processors, from the line and discontinuing its Itanium workstations entirely begs the question of what plans HP has long-term for its HP-UX workstation customers. And everybody is now going to wonder if the withdrawal of Itanium workstations somehow points to a future HP that doesn't use Itanium in servers. The statement from HP indicated that the decision to stop selling Itanium workstations was based on customer needs: "In working with and listening to our high-performance workstation partners and customers, we have become aware that the focus in this arena is being driven toward 64-bit extension technology."
That is all well and good for HP's Unix workstation customers, provided that they don't mind paying a big premium to buy baby Itanium/HP-UX servers and use them as workstations, that they don't mind shifting to Windows or Linux for workstations, or that they know that HP is going to support HP-UX on either 64-bit Xeon or Opteron processors. There is no indication that the latter is going to happen, by the way. But stranger things have happened. HP is obviously very keen on explaining that the death of Itanium doesn't mean it is dropping support for Itanium on servers.
"The decision to discontinue HP's Itanium workstation investment is limited to the workstation market and has no impact on HP's success with Itanium-based Integrity servers," the company statement said. "HP continues its ongoing investment in Integrity server development and the multi-OS industry-standard Integrity server ecosystem. In the server market, which has different dynamics and customer requirements, HP continues its commitment to deliver on the roadmap for Integrity servers, as part of its overall portfolio of industry-standards-based servers." The question now is whether customers will believe HP. If they don't, they may start pressuring HP to port HP-UX to Xeon-64s or Opterons. This would be a very big job.
Gartner Says Microsoft, IBM Lead in Web Services, SOAs
Are you wondering which middleware stack to base your new Web services or services oriented architecture (SOA) strategy on? According to a new "Magic Quadrant" report by IT analyst Gartner, you couldn't do any worse than Microsoft and IBM, who are nearly neck and neck for the lead position in the Web services race. The two tech giants compete on many levels, but they have collaborated on Web services standards, and that shows in the rankings. Microsoft has a slight lead over IBM in the Magic Quadrant (it has both better "completeness of vision" and "ability to executive," but not by much), and the two companies are the only ones to occupy the hallowed upper-right "leaders" sector of the quadrant; Oracle and SAP are on the cusp of breaking into the leaders quadrant.
In terms of strengths, Gartner says IBM is moving its focus from Web services to SOAs, which shows its interest in architectures and props its legacy platforms (MVS and OS/400), proprietary middleware (WebSphere MQ), and service offerings. However, the continued emergence of service-oriented business applications could leave IBM and its "software stack" strategy out in the cold, warns Gartner. Microsoft's biggest strength when it comes to Web services and SOAs continues to be its Visual Studio.NET development environment and the sheer number of developers using it, according to Gartner. The IT analyst also sees a silver lining in the elimination of WinFS from the upcoming Longhorn release of Windows: that dropping the new file system will allow it to more quickly deliver new Web services technology, specifically Microsoft's "Indigo" Web services "sub-system." However, Microsoft, which doesn't have the same qualms as IBM over competing in the business application market, needs to do more to differentiate its service-oriented business applications, Gartner says.
Microsoft Leads Integration Server Pack, Says Nucleus
Considering Microsoft's lead in Gartner's Web services and service oriented architecture (SOA) study, it really should come as no surprise that the Redmond, Washington, company also scored well in Nucleus Research's latest return on investment (ROI) study on the major integration platforms. The young Massachusetts IT analyst firm, which has popped many an ROI bubble with Ralph Nader-esque aplomb, says that integration isn't as complicated or risky as it once was, which Nucleus credits to "the current buzzword," which is--are you ready?--SOA!
Nucleus' latest ROI scorecard is on integration software, and Microsoft BizTalk Server takes the prize, followed by BEA WebLogic 8.1, IBM WebSphere 5, Sonic Software Business Integration Suite, TIBCO BusinessWorks, and webMethods Enterprise Services Platform, in that order. Microsoft scored a nearly perfect 4.8 rating across five categories (deployment, adoption, support, business impact, and vendor), while webMethods, which once led the integration broker market, along with TIBCO, brought up the rear with a 3.8 rating on the Nucleus scorecard; TIBCO was fourth, with a 4.0 rating.
Microsoft Taps Former IBMer to Lead Public Sector Business
Gerri Elliot has been tapped to lead Microsoft's worldwide public sector division. Elliot, who joined Microsoft in 2001, after 22 years with IBM, will be vice president in charge of relations with the software giant's governmental and educational customers. Elliot was previously vice president of Microsoft's enterprise group for the United States, where she and 2,500 employees helped serve the company's largest customers. At the same time, she was responsible for several industry verticals, including financial services, healthcare, automotive, retail, and hospitality. The worldwide government sector for Microsoft is a critical one right now, as many governmental organizations struggle with the decision to use open source software or Windows.
IDC Says Growth in PC Shipments Peaked in Q2
A surge in demand for commercial PCs earlier this year has led IDC to forecast modest growth in the sector for the second half of 2004, but don't get too excited about a resurgence of PC mania and all that entails just yet. First, the good news: commercial PC shipments grew by more than 17 percent during the second quarter, the highest quarter-on-quarter increase since the middle of 1999 and the fourth consecutive quarter with more than 13 percent growth. Based on the growth in the second quarter, IDC raised its full-year 2004 projection to 176.5 million units, which would be about 14 percent better than last year. However, it appears we have already passed the peak of the PC growth curve. IDC says that increases in PC shipments worldwide will dip from 20 percent in the second half of 2003 to 9 percent during the second half of 2004. The Massachusetts IT analyst firm lowered its 2005 projections to about 10.5 percent growth, "and projections for growth in future years remain in single digits," it says.
Study Says American High Tech Has Lost 200,000 Jobs
The official economists for the U.S. government said that the recession ended in November 2001, but most of us think that this is a load of hogwash, at least in the IT sector, which has had perhaps more than its share of ups and downs in the past three years. According to a report from the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Chicago, which examined government statistics in the past few years, the unemployment rate for computer programmers was 6.7 percent in 2003, two years after the recession ended. It is interesting to note that, at the height of this recession, the unemployment rate for programmers was 2.5 percent.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in March 2001, when the recession officially began, there were 2.146 million employees in the IT industry in the States, and by April 2004 that number dropped to 1.743 million. In the major metro areas associated with IT--Boston, Chicago, Dallas, San Jose, San Francisco, Seattle--IT employment was absolutely hammered, down 18 to 25 percent, compared with the national average of only a 10 percent decline in IT jobs. The only major metro area where IT employment held was Washington, D.C. Obviously, the unemployment rates in these areas have spiked over that time. The downturn in IT spending and the contraction of the economy are certainly part of the cause of the loss of those 200,000 jobs nationwide since the recession was declared over, but the report also suggests that offshoring is having an impact, too. While the evidence for this assertion is thin, many IT professionals probably agree with that sentiment.
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