• Former Microsoft COO Joins the Vision Solutions Board

  December 3, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  High availability and disaster recovery software maker Vision Solutions has built itself into the dominant position in the System i market through acquisitions in the past year, thanks to private equity from Thoma Cressey Bravo. And having done that, the company’s owners and managers are trying to get the best minds to chart the company’s future. To that end, Vision Solutions was obviously quite pleased to announce last week that it has landed a well-known, top former executive from Microsoft, Bob Herbold, to its board of directors. Herbold is the perfect executive for just about any board of

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• Climate Savers Launches ‘Green’ Computer Catalog

  December 3, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Having trouble finding a new server or desktop PC that takes it easy on the juice and minimizes the impact on global warming? Then you might want to check out a new online product catalog launched this week by Climate Savers Computing Initiative that provides a list of IT equipment that meets the group’s efficiency guidelines. Climate Savers was created this summer by a consortium of vendors, including Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, with the goal of reducing computers’ electricity consumption by 50 percent by 2010. It also hopes to encourage computer and component manufacturers to build products that meet new

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• Lawson Partners for Expansion in the Hot Brazilian Market

  December 3, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The Brazilian economy runs hot and sometimes cold, and right now, it is hot, hot, hot. Whenever IT vendors talk about where they are growing at double digits, Brazil is in the list, right along with Russia, India, and China. And that is why ERP software vendor Lawson Software is fired up to be working with a new distribution partner for its M3 suite in Brazil. That partner, Consultix Consultoria Assessoria, has been hired to provide sales, implementation, training, maintenance, and other consulting services for Lawson M3 customers in Brazil. Initially, Consultix will focus on peddling the M3 suite,

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• The System i Fourth Quarter Sales Strategy

  November 26, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As I sit here at my desk writing this article, just about everyone–including myself–is gearing up for the Thanksgiving holiday in America. But the rest of the world does not take a break in late November. The month is just one thing standing between them and the close of another year of either buying or selling IT infrastructure. And right now is the last couple of weeks that IBM and its System i channel partners can possibly hope to peddle new gear to customers and boost sales with whatever budget money is left for 2007. It is an interesting challenge

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• Power Systems Division Eyes Cognos Deal; Business Systems Shrugs

  November 26, 2007 Dan Burger

  For the typical System i shop, the ramifications of IBM‘s acquisition of business intelligence software provider Cognos two weeks ago will have less effect than tossing a cup of water in the ocean. Not now, not next month, or next year. That’s not because there is little or no interest in business intelligence among the users of i5/OS and OS/400. Business intelligence, regardless of how you define it, is a factor in the IT planning within many System i-centric companies–the bigger the company, the bigger the BI factor. It’s pretty safe to say that the IBM-Cognos deal will only

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• As I See It: The Sick Guys in Your Wallet

  November 26, 2007 Victor Rozek

  If you’ve been employed for the past six years, without being officially notified you have been given a 30 percent pay cut. That’s what happens when the dollar drops by nearly one-third of its value. What also happens is that your $300,000 home loses $90,000 of its value; your savings are worth 30 percent less, and your groceries cost 30 percent more. As any driver knows, the price of a barrel of oil is over five times what it was just six years ago. One sure sign that the guys pictured on our currency are in poor health is how

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• Reader Feedback on Native .NET for System i

  November 26, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last week, I solicited some information from readers of The Four Hundred to see if having some sort of native .NET programming environment on the System i machine would be a benefit to the System i platform. A number of vendors were pondering the idea, so I threw it out to the base to see not only if this was important, but if the lack of .NET support was in any way driving people off the i5/OS and OS/400 platform and onto Windows. Here’s a sampling of the responses IT Jungle received, starting with a question: I am having a

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• IBM Slashes Linux SupportLine Prices for System i and p

  November 26, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  One of the key differentiators that IBM has always brought to bear on the midrange is well-regarded technical support for operating systems and related systems software. OS/400 and AIX have always had top-notch tech support–at least compared to their peers on other platforms. The advent of Linux, which is not controlled by Big Blue, presented a bit of a challenge to the company. But IBM has woven Linux into its SupportLine tech support services on its System i and System p Power-based platforms. Last week, the company dramatically reduced the cost of Linux support. For several years now, IBM has

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• Is There an NSA Back Door in Encryption Algorithms?

  November 26, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In general, security is not a beat we cover very deeply at IT Jungle. The enterprise-class platforms we cover are all designed with many different kinds of security, and we let experts worry about the very hairy details that go into securing platforms, much as end users themselves do when they trust encryption, antivirus, firewall, and other kinds of code. But what happens when the encryption code behind these products is flawed. A recent story in Wired magazine had a title that jumped out like a criminal wielding a gun: Did NSA Put a Secret Backdoor in New Encryption Standard?

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• Top Execs at TomorrowNow Depart, SAP Hints at Sale

  November 26, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  ERP software giant SAP said last week that several top executives at its TomorrowNow unit, which sells third-party support for various Oracle ERP suites, have resigned. The company also said in a statement that it was exploring its options for the TomorrowNow unit, including selling it. TomorrowNow offers independent support for customers using PeopleSoft, JDE, and Siebel software suites. No software company is happy when a third party is offering support for its products, but Oracle was obviously unhappy when SAP acquired TomorrowNow in January 2005. SAP did not explain in its statement the reasons why Andrew Nelson, TomorrowNow’s chief

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