• Pandora’s Box: A Rumored Entry Power Server

  July 24, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  According to sources familiar with IBM‘s plans, the company is working on a new entry-level server based on the Power5+ platform. Code-named “Pandora’s Box,” this server will, if the rumors are true and if it ever comes to market, have some of the features and capabilities that many of us in the OS/400 community have been yearning to see for IBM’s Power machines to better compete with Wintel platforms, which rule the small and medium business market, and Lintel boxes, which might if Linux catches on as Unix and Windows did in their turn. There were a lot of

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• Magic Software OEMs DB2 Express Database for eDeveloper Tool

  July 24, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Magic Software, a provider of development tools and application integration software the i5/OS and OS/400 platform, last week said that it had worked out a deal with IBM whereby it would license the DB2 Express database and embed it inside its eDeveloper V10 development tools. DB2 Express is a version of the DB2 database that Big Blue created for Windows, Unix, and Linux servers, one that aims at taking on MySQL, PostgreSQL, Ingres, and other open source databases. (DB2 Express is not to be confused with DB2 Express-C, which is a free version based on the database

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• Lakeview Inks Exclusive Distribution Deal with Avnet

  July 24, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  High availability software vendor Lakeview Technology will today announce that it has inked a mutually exclusive deal with Avnet Partner Solutions Americas that will designate Avnet as the sole System i reseller channel through which Lakeview will peddle its MIMIX product line. Exclusive deals are a rarity in the computer business these days, but they still do happen because sometimes a tighter link between a vendor and a distributor can make for more revenues and profits. This is clearly what both Avnet and Lakeview are hoping for in this case. “This is a really big change for us,” explains Ed

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• Kronos Buys Two Companies, Warns of Revenue Dip in Q3

  July 24, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For years now, Kronos has been on an acquisitions tear and pushed for organic growth to dominate the market for time management and related human resource management software. To that end, Kronos has acquired two more companies, Unicru and SmartTime Software. Unicru has carved a niche for itself in developing software that helps automate the process of analyzing job applications, and boasts that it has processed more than 22 million job applications. The software aims to cut down the time human resources departments and managers take to find and hire people, and says that it can cut that time down

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• Web Developer Affinigent Acquires iSeries Specialist Hainey Business Systems

  July 24, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Perhaps more than any other system that IBM sold in its history, the company’s midrange products–the System/36, AS/400, and iSeries machines in particular–were always sold on a regional basis, even though the machines were architected for international businesses with their unique language, currency, and power requirements. Back in the heyday of the AS/400, in the mid-1990s, the AS/400 bragged about having more than 8,000 software partners who sold over 20,000 applications. Most of those companies are companies most of us never heard of, because we were not in their business vertical or their region. Why former IBM chairman Louis Gerstner

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• IBM Offers Backup and Recovery Analysis Service to System i Shops

  July 24, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If you are a relatively large OS/400 or i5/OS shop and you have big backup and recovery issues, IBM is now offering a new service that is designed to help you sort through the issues relating to your backup and recovery window. The System i Backup and Recovery Analysis service, which was announced last week, doesn’t run your backup and recovery operations, but rather does a broad and deep assessment of the issues in your own data center. IBMers come in and take a look at what servers and storage you have, streamline your processes, and make recommendations (which very

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• Reader Feedback: System i5 520 JDE EnterpriseOne Solution Edition Pricing

  July 24, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  While all of us (with the possible exception of business partners and resellers who are trying to make their profit numbers and sales quotas) cheer every time IBM does something to make the i5/OS and OS/400 platform more competitive, it is not always easy reckoning the best way to do it. Two readers offered some interesting comments, one with very precise experience running JDE software, which helped me make a more refined ProLiant configuration to compare to the System i5 box. Great reporting on the i5 520 for JDE. I don’t follow why user-based pricing does not work. DB2 on

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Big Indians, Little Indians

  July 24, 2006 Hesh Wiener

  IBM is pumping something like $6 billion (or nearly 20 percent of its net worth) into its operations in India. This bold move is a big step that could, if the services business follows the trajectory of the PC business, first make India the primary source of IBM’s services personnel and later allow an Indian company to acquire the whole division. But in its rush to capitalize on the Indians of South Asia, IBM and the many other computer companies facing east are overlooking the possibilities offered by some other Indians: Native Americans. It’s easy to understand how this

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• Horticulture Companies Grow With the System i5

  July 24, 2006 Mary Lou Roberts

  I phoned Doreen Anderson, manager of platforms for Ball Horticultural from my patio, on one of the far-too-few gorgeous days (no thunderstorms, and a comfortable temperature in the mid-80s) in the past two weeks here in the Northeast. The planters around my patio are filled with impatiens, begonias, and geraniums, and the plants were lush and flush with color. It seemed like the perfect setting to talk about the important role that the System i plays in making all that beauty available. Ball Horticultural is a 100-year-old family business located in west Chicago that supplies seeds, plugs, young plants, and

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• IBM Has Its Financial Ups and Downs in Q2

  July 24, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM reported its financial results for its second quarter last Tuesday after the markets closed, and as is often the case with a company as large as Big Blue, there were some good things and not so good things in the quarter. IBM’s sales of System z mainframes and various software were up, but the transition to the Power5+ chip in the System p and System i Power-based servers and other issues with System x servers resulted in disappointing sales for these products, and services books and revenues were also down. IBM posted $21.9 billion in sales for the quarter,

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