Timothy Prickett Morgan
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SMBs Are Still Stingy with the IT Budgets, Says IDC
April 12, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe economy may be on the mend here and there in the world, but apparently small and medium businesses are waiting to see things get a whole lot better before they get their checkbooks out and start spending like it was 2008 on IT goods and services.
Researchers from IDC has radically lowered their forecasts for IT spending at SMBs, and now say that between 2010 and 2014, IT spending among this class of companies, which are conservative by nature, will only grow by 5.5 percent.
“The downturn had a devastating impact on SMBs worldwide,” explained Ray Boggs, vice president
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IBM Peddling Vintage iSeries Boxes at a Premium
April 12, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreBack in January, when I was discussing a Power Systems trade-in deal that IBM had tweaked, I said that I could no longer see the second-hand Power Systems that IBM’s Global Financing unit peddles running the i5/OS and i operating systems. An intrepid reader of The Four Hundred found a different place where “Certified Pre-owned Power Systems – iOS” machines are available second-hand (or perhaps third for all we know) and pointed it out to me.
So I thought that you, like myself and this reader, would get a chuckle out of what Big Blue is charging for some vintage
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Another Smarter Planet Blitz This Week, i 7.1 Included
April 12, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIt has been no secret to readers of The Four Hundred that some IBM announcements were afoot in early February and were expected again around the middle of April.
While IBM has not yet arranged for prebriefings with the press on the announcements, which is its normal practice, I have heard from sources at Big Blue that there are some announcements planned for Tuesday, and more than a few of them have said that the expected new version of the i For Business, platform, i 7.1, will be one of the major things revealed. I know that business partners downstream
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IBM’s Smartie and Pizzazz Clusters–Still i-Less
April 12, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIBM and its peers in the IT racket have a way of making even neat technology sound boring with the public product names they choose, even if they do show a little flair with product names from time to time when those products are in development. So it is with data analytics and online transaction processing clusters that Big Blue rolled out last week, which I am rechristening the Smartie and Pizzazz systems because, well, because I just can’t stand typing Smart Analytics System and PureScale Application Server every time I mention the machines.
It is no secret that Oracle
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The Possibilities for Open Access for RPG
April 12, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreAs I sit here on Thursday afternoon, IBM has not yet confirmed that there are product announcements coming out this week relating to the Power Systems platform, much less mentioned the new i 7.1 operating system, perhaps a new Power Systems 720 or 795 if we are lucky (because I like to chew on iron), or the Open Access for RPG tool that we caught some hints about at the end of last year and once again in early March.
IBM hasn’t briefed anyone on i 7.1 yet, but the word I hear is that the announcement will be
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Gabriel X64 Server Survey: Brother, Can You Spare Some Time?
April 5, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreOur good buddy, Dan Olds, over at Gabriel Consulting Group is looking for customers with X64 server to take part in his annual server survey, and he could use the assistance of readers of The Four Hundred.
Admit it. You have these Winders and Loonix boxes all over the place. They crop up like mold in an unclean bathroom, like mice in a barn, like clouds off the coast of Africa that come whipping across the Atlantic, causing untold damage.
Well, Gabriel Consulting wants to find out exactly what you think of those old X86 and newer X64 servers
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Oracle Squeaks Out Growth, Promises Revenues from Sun
April 5, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreAs the second-largest provider of application software in the world and now a server maker with aspirations of selling integrated systems, Oracle is now, by definition, a direct competitor to the AS/400 and its progeny. And how well or poorly it does, financially as well as technically, matters to i For Business shops. Because for a lot of the larger i shops that account for the bulk of the platform’s revenues these days, the next stop if they don’t continue to invest in IBM gear is a move to an Oracle platform.
While The Four Hundred was on hiatus, Oracle
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IBM Promotion Cuts PowerVM Hypervisor Upgrade Fees
April 5, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIf you are thinking about upgrading the capability of the PowerVM hypervisor on your Power Systems box, IBM wants you to think a little bit faster and upgrade that key systems software now rather than waiting.
To that end, the company announced a special promotion last week in announcement letter 310-150 whereby it is giving customers who upgrade from whatever level of PowerVM they have to the next high level up a 15 or 20 percent discount off the upgrade fees. Specifically, the deal covers upgrades from PowerVM Express Edition (5765-PVX) to PowerVM Standard Edition (5765-PVS) or to PowerVM Enterprise
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Reader Feedback on Madoff’s RPG Coders Indicted in Ponzi Scam
April 5, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreFinally RPG is back! After all these years of being relegated to boring OLTP programs, RPG and the AS/400 rock!
Now, when I send resumes, I include all the articles regarding Madoff and the 400, underscoring the creative use of RPG in the scheme.
I have had more offers in the last year than the last 20 years combined! HA! All you sniveling little Java, VB, PHP, and .NET programmers–who’s laughing now!
–TS
“And this probably makes O’Hara and Perez the two highest paid RPG programmers in history.”
Is it wrong to take perverse pride in this? I’m still laughing.
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The Power7 Chip Gets Some Stiff X64 Competition
April 5, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThree quarters of the X64 assault on the midrange server market have been deployed into the field, with last week’s launching of Intel‘s eight-core “Nehalem-EX” Xeon 7500s and Advanced Micro Devices‘s 12-core “Magny-Cours” Opteron 6100s. Three weeks ago, Intel put the six-core “Westmere-EP” Xeon 5600s out, and that only leaves the six-core “Lisbon” Opteron 4100s left to enter the price war battlefield sometime in the second quarter of this year.
As the X64 chip makers and their OEM server partners start firing away at each other to compete for server deals in this still rickety economy, it is