Timothy Prickett Morgan
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Why IBM Is Trying To Surf The Linux Wave With Power Systems
June 11, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIf you are wondering why IBM is all hot-to-trot with its new PowerLinux machines, which are Power Systems servers tweaked to only run Linux and with lower hardware and software prices than regular Power Systems iron that runs AIX and IBM i, then you need look no further than the latest server numbers from IDC. Sales of Linux-based machines shot up like a rocket, thanks to some big supercomputer and hyperscale cloud deals and are outpacing the market substantially.
The PowerLinux machines made their debut back in April and offer customers who only run Linux on the machines substantial
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Q&A With Colin Parris, IBM’s Power Systems GM
June 11, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreQ&A With Colin Parris, IBM’s Power Systems GM
Just ahead of the COMMON midrange conference back in early May, Colin Parris, who had been vice president and business line manager for the Power Systems line, was named general manager of the division, replacing Tom Rosamilia, who was GM of a combined Power and System z mainframe division. Parris, whose background is in software and research, takes charge of Power Systems when it has vanquished its Unix and proprietary rivals but is looking for a way to expand Power-based computing in the enterprise.
(Rosamilia, as The Four Hundred previously reported,
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The Magic Continues In The First Quarter For Magic Software
June 4, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreMagic Software Enterprises turned in its best year ever in 2011, and the momentum is continuing in the first quarter of this year.
In the quarter ended in March, Magic Software brought in just over $30 million in revenues, a 17.9 percent increase over the year-ago period. Gross profits rose by 27 percent, to $13.1 million, and even though research and development costs rose by a factor of 2.5 to $906,000 and other costs were on the rise, too, net income at Magic Software shot up even faster, by 31.7 percent to $4.2 million.
Guy Bernstein, CEO at the company,
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Jack Henry Sees Steady Improvement In Fiscal Q3
June 4, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreBanking software and services provider Jack Henry says that as far as it can tell, the economy continues to mend among the small and midrange banks that are its dominant customers. Many of Jack Henry’s customers are users of Power Systems running the IBM i operating system, so that is good news.
In the third quarter of fiscal 2012 ended in March (why do companies unnecessarily have fiscal years that don’t match calendar years?), the company’s software licensing revenues were up 15 percent, to just a hair over $15 million. Hardware sales, which have been on a downward trend for
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Reader Feedback On Pocket Litter, On Spooky Action, and On A House of Many Windows
June 4, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreVictor:
My name is Chipper Miller and over the years I have enjoyed many of your articles. This most recent one regarding social media, As I See It: A House of Many Windows, was spot on. I have a friend at church and she says her daughter is really isolated due to Facebook, the computer, etc.
Again, thank you for your contributions. One of my favorites was Out of the Blue: Uncivil Action, which very much described a situation I had been in. Two co-workers (one was an owner) were very hostile and vicious, and I was beginning
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Power Systems Power Through Server Downturn
June 4, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThere were two bright spots in the server racket in the first quarter of this year, according to market researcher Gartner, and one of them was IBM‘s Power Systems iron. The other, of course, was the cohort of X86 server makers, who are gnawing at the flesh of Unix and proprietary server makers while the Unix vendors are busy taking pieces out of one another’s hides. The economy is still jittery in a number of parts of the world, and the server biz is losing a bit of its oomph.
But don’t get the wrong idea. There’s a
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IBM Puffs Up New Public, Private SmartCloud Releases
June 4, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreJust like any other product, public and private clouds have to change and evolve to get more relevant and to keep pace with the competition. IBM has made a lot of promises with its SmartCloud private cloud infrastructure, which you install in your data center to create virtual cloudy server and storage slices, and its SmartCloud Enterprise and Enterprise+ clouds, which Big Blue launched a little more than a year ago and said it would flesh out a bit more.
With a bunch of announcements just before the Memorial Day holiday here in the United States, IBM is making good
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Three Ways To Fix NetServer Access Problems
May 30, 2012 Hey, Joe
… Read moreI tried mapping a Windows drive letter to the root folder (/) of my Integrated File System (IFS) by using an IBM i NetServer file share. But I can’t get the drive to map. My cubicle buddy can map her drive. Why can’t I map my drive?
–Phil
Just as your IBM i user profile can be disabled from signing on to the system after a set number of incorrect sign-on attempts, the system can also automatically disable your user profile from IBM i NetServer access after you exceed the maximum number of sign-on attempts when trying to access a
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Eliminate The Legitimate Use Of GOTO
May 30, 2012 Ted Holt
… Read moreToday I want to share with you some of the ugliest RPG code I’ve ever seen. It is to me the programming-language equivalent of Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame, and I am its progenitor. Then I will tell you why I wrote this code, and why, despite its ugliness, the code was correct. Last, I will tell you how to “prettify” it.
The ugly code of which I speak is in a template source code member for file maintenance programs. It is similar in structure to this example:
P MoveItem b D pi D inItemID 6a const D inWhsID -
Preparing To Install IBM’s RUNSQL Command
May 30, 2012 Rob Berendt
… Read moreI’ve often needed to run a SQL statement from within a CL program. I knew I could by calling a RPG program with SQL embedded in it, or by executing RUNSQLSTM, but I really didn’t want to go to that much trouble to run one simple SQL statement.
IBM has given you a way to run an SQL command within a CL procedure if you’re running IBM i 6.1 or 7.1. It’s a new CL command called RUNSQL. For 7.1, you must order level 14 or higher of DB2 PTF Group SF99701. For 6.1, order level 25 or higher of