• More Reader Feedback on EGL, State of System i, Pricing Disparities

  October 15, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Even though they ran a few weeks ago, readers of The Four Hundred are still sending in feedback on two stories that ran recently, State of the System i: What’s Going On in the Market? and EGL: The Future of Programming for the System i? Both stories asked questions, and tried to answer them, and the state of the System i story is but one in a continuing series that I am working on now. One reader also reacted to the lead story in last week’s issue, which covered a System i upgrade deal and discounts on BladeCenter gear. (See

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• Worldwide IT Spending to Top $3 Trillion in 2007

  October 15, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With the economy going a bit wobbly in the summer months and with IT often being one of the places where companies immediately cut back on spending, you might be thinking that CEOs and CFOs are sharpening their knives right about now and looking over at the data center. But apparently executives remain optimistic enough about this year and next that Gartner can predict a pretty substantial increase in IT spending worldwide. Gartner last week held its eponymous Symposium/ITexpo in Orlando, Florida, and released a report at the event that said worldwide IT spending will hit $3.1 trillion in 2007,

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• New System i 525 Solution Editions Debut, 570 Gets Tweaked

  October 15, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The Solution Editions of the System i product line have come full circle. Originally, the iSeries and System i5 Solution Edition machines were variants on regular Express configurations with OS/400 or i5/OS Enterprise Edition or Standard Edition that were preconfigured to support a reasonable number of users of popular ERP software for the platform. Then, in October 2006, IBM tested out the idea of user-based software pricing with special i5 520 Solution Edition machines. Last week, the user-priced System i5 525 was converted back to a Solution Edition for Oracle and SAP suites. Both of the new Solution Edition machines

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• RPG Enhancements for i5/OS V6R1 Revealed

  October 15, 2007 Dan Burger

  Early in 2008, we’ll be seeing another upgrade to the i5/OS operating system, V6R1. IBM previewed some of its features in the upcoming software. Speculation regarding what will be in V6R1 is already at least knee-deep, and you can expect it to get much deeper in the final months of 2007. Those with greatest curiosity are generally the RPG programmers. And for them, IBM has nailed down exactly what a few new features will be. The source of this information is George Farr, IBM’s worldwide product line manager for WebSphere Development Studio, WebSphere Development Studio Client, and the RPG compilers

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• IBM Adds Web Services and SOA Tools to the System i

  October 15, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In case you missed it, IBM‘s Software Group is very big on applications built using Web services and adhering to a services oriented architecture (SOA). And, as the largest supplier of legacy applications running on mainframe and i5/OS and OS/400 platforms, and a big supplier of Windows and Unix platforms (which also have their own legacy issues when it comes to interfacing with the Web), this all stands to reason. IBM’s SOA strategy is as simple as it is predictable–add another layer of abstraction atop of legacy platforms, exposing their fields and data streams as services, and then allow

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• IBM Adds Zend to Value Pak, Ships ESX Server Storage Support

  October 15, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Starting this week, IBM will deliver a new Value Pack bundle of software for the i5/OS V5R4 operating system that contains PHP and database software suitable for running PHP applications natively on the System i platform–all installable at the same time and all for a discounted price, including software and support. The Zend and MySQL Value Pack for i5/OS (licensed program product number 5639-MVP) will be available on October 19, and it includes a license to three programs from Zend Technology, the creator of PHP, and one from MySQL, the creator of the popular database engine that is

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• Zend Puts Out New Release of Commercial-Grade PHP

  October 15, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The third annual ZendCon conference for PHP programmers and vendors of PHP-related products was held in Cupertino, California, last week, and Zend Technology, the creator and maintainer of the open source PHP language and runtime tools, is using the event as a springboard for its new Zend Core 2.5 product, which includes development tools and runtime environments for specific platforms. Zend also announced the “Neon” beta release of Zend Studio for Eclipse as well as various integrations with products from IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle. Zend Core 2.5 is an incremental release of the commercial-grade PHP environment

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• ‘Viral’ Marketing Campaign from Bytware Targets PHP-i5/OS Security

  October 15, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Is i5/OS susceptible to a PHP virus? According to i5/OS security software vendor Bytware, it very well could be. In any event, System i users should be aware of the security threats posed by enabling PHP on the server, the company says, and that’s why it kicked off a “viral” marketing and educational campaign at the COMMON Focus show in Columbus, Ohio, yesterday. Bytware’s campaign, which will play out on the Web over the next several weeks, revolves around a story about a financial services company whose System i server is hacked by a crime syndicate in China. While

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• AS/400s Are From Rochester, RS/6000s Are From Austin

  October 15, 2007 Doug Mewmaw

  Last week, I did something that I never thought would happen in my IT life. I am a 19-year AS/400-iSeries-System i veteran, and I had the pleasure of attending my first ever System p Technical Conference, which was hosted in San Antonio, Texas. After one week of sessions and talking with my fellow conference attendees, my wife texted me and asked about the conference. My text messages are normally very wordy, as I admit I’m a bit old fashioned. I think I shocked my wife with this simple response: “OMG–I am in another world.” My daughter taught me the OMG

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• Avnet Builds Out EMEA Business with ACAL, Magirus Acquisitions

  October 15, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IT reseller Avnet said last week that it has acquired two European resellers in an effort to build out its Technology Solutions distribution business. With these deals, the Technology Solutions unit will have sales in excess of $2.5 billion in EMEA, and Avnet will significantly increase its presence in the two largest IT markets in EMEA–the United Kingdom and Germany. On September 27, Avnet paid £41 million (about $84 million at current exchange rates between British pounds and U.S. dollars) to acquire the IT Business Solutions unit of ACAL, a British distributor that wants to sell the solutions business

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