Timothy Prickett Morgan
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Salesforce.com Was The Top CRM Software Peddler In 2012
May 13, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreCall it a sign of the times. According to the latest rankings available from IT market researcher Gartner, online and SaaSy software supplier Salesforce.com has blown by SAP to become the top supplier of customer relationship software in the world.
The rankings from Gartner are based financial figures for the full 2012 year, and have Salesforce.com raking in $2.53 billion for its online, subscription-based CRM wares. That is an increase of 26 percent over the revenues that the company generated in 2011. Salesforce.com was by no means the only fast-growing CRM software supplier, so don’t get the wrong idea.
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Arrow Boosts Sales And Profits For Enterprise Computing In Q1
May 13, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreVarious IT suppliers have had a tough time in various parts of their businesses as 2013 has gotten rolling, but master electronics and IT distributor Arrow Electronics seems to be having an easier time than some of the upstream vendors whose products it peddles in the data center.
In the first quarter ended in March, Arrow said that its overall sales contracted by 1 percent to $4.85 billion, mainly by a reduction in its electronic components business, which fell by 5 percent to $3.19 billion. Keeping that revenue coming in selling components came at a cost, however, and operating earnings
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Dances With Elephants
May 13, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIf you are a typical IBM i shop, you have spent decades turning the transactional data in your application stack into information that business managers and other workers within the company can not only use to keep the money rolling in and the products rolling out, but to do a better job of managing those two processes. And you are probably pretty proud of the fact that it takes relatively modest resources to accomplish this, and you are no doubt wondering what all of this yammering about so-called “big data” is all about.
Well, the first thing big data is
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Avnet Systems Biz Is A Little Soft In Fiscal Q3
May 6, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe first three months of 2013 were choppy for a lot of IT suppliers and distributors, and the situation was no different for master electronics components and IT distributor Avnet. The box pusher saw a bit of a budget flush in the fourth quarter of 2012, which was the second quarter of its fiscal 2013 year, but no such luck this time around with the U.S. government unsure of what it is going to spend once we get put beyond September this year and general skittishness in China and parts of Europe.
In the quarter ended March 30, Avnet’s
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COMMON Europe Opens Up 2013 Top Concerns Survey
May 6, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIf you have a bone to pick with IBM or just a helpful suggestion on how it might improve the Power Systems platform running the IBM i operating systems, now is your chance to do something about it.
For the past seven years, COMMON Europe has done its part to poll the IBM i user base and try to figure out what they are worried about. And now the eighth annual Top Concerns survey is open for you to speak your mind and help shape the future of this platform upon which we all make our livings. (Or at least
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Systems And Strategy Execs Switch Roles At Big Blue
May 6, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreGinni Rometty is not cleaning house after a particularly unprofitable–and surprisingly so–first quarter for its Systems and Technology Group. But just after The Four Hundred went on hiatus at the end of April, IBM‘s CEO and chairman announced that she was swapping the roles of two executives who are long familiar to the OS/400 and IBM i community.
The executives who are swapping desks are Rod Adkins, who has been running Systems and Technology Group for the past couple of years, and Tom Rosamilia, who used to work for Adkins as general manager of the System z business and
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IBM Launches Extended Support For i5/OS V5R4
May 6, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreNot only is i5/OS V5R4 a rugged operating system in terms of its stability and reliability, but it is also one of the most long-lived operating systems in the history of computing. While regular Software Maintenance (SWMA) support for V5R4 expires on September 30 this year, IBM has, as promised, announced an extended SWMA support offering for V5R4 for customers who cannot, for whatever reason, get onto a newer IBM i 6.1 or 7.1 release by the end of September.
In announcement letter 613-004, IBM introduced Service Extension for i5/OS V5R4, offers Software Maintenance support starting on October 1,
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Admin Alert: Six Things To Do Before Switching Production Processing To Your CBU
May 1, 2013 Joe Hertvik
… Read moreSwitching production processing to an IBM i Capacity BackUp (CBU) system involves more than just running the High Availability (HA) software commands that initiate the switch. It also involves preparing your source and target machines to switch places, so that data is correctly replicated and you can confidently run production processing on your CBU. Today, I’ll describe six steps you can take to ensure a smooth CBU switch over.
Setting The Stage
This article lists out tasks you should consider adding to your HA run book to produce the best results when switching production processing to an IBM i CBU
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Odds and Ends
May 1, 2013 Ted Holt
… Read moreIt’s been awhile since we had an issue of odds and ends. Today seems like a good day for it. I hope you find something of benefit here.
Hey, Ted:
I tried to use the sed command in a CL program to replace [ with [n (newline). I tried many ways to get it to work. I finally gave up and used tr to translate from [ to n. I was really hoping to keep the bracket.
When running Qshell commands in a CL procedure, how can you force a continuation line for a sed command? How can you insert
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Copy Source Members Between Systems Without FTP
May 1, 2013 Bob Cozzi
… Read moreMoving source code between systems is critical in a multi-system environment. Using save/restore is one way to accomplish this task, but not everyone has save/restore authority. Using FTP is another popular way to move one or more source members between systems, but the downside is that the SRCSEQ and SRCDAT fields are thrown out. Only the SRCDTA field is sent, similar to sending a plain ASCII text file. Maybe I’m late to the party, but I found a better way.
The better way is one of those things that causes me to think that I must be the last person