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  • Mad Dog 21/21: You Can Teleworker, But Who Will Listen?

    September 22, 2008 Hesh Wiener

    As you read this on your display screen, you are a potential (if not actual) teleworker. Maybe you’re in the office, but you could as easily be far away. In principle, people in many jobs could work outside the office, and, with gasoline at a buck a quart, it’s no longer hypothetical. These days, teleworking might be practical not only for employees but also for employers. It is a topic that requires fresh scrutiny, some new technology, and appreciation of its roots, which go back 2,500 years.

    The possibility that people whose work is based on using a computer could

    …

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  • Oracle Soars in Fiscal Q1, But Applications Sales Soften

    September 22, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    Systems and application software maker Oracle reported its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2009 last week, and both sales and profits were up smartly in the quarter. But, somewhat ominously and not really all that surprisingly given the jumpiness in the world’s economies, sales of new application software licenses were soft.

    In the three months ended August 31, Oracle’s overall sales rose by 17.7 percent to $5.3 billion, and net income shot up by 28.2 percent to just under $1.1 billion. It would be hard to find a company, large or small, that did better in a

    …

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  • Reader Feedback on IT Jungle Shutting Down Non-AS/400 Newsletters

    September 22, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    Well, my decision to shut down IT Jungle’s mainframe, Linux, Windows, and Unix newsletters took many of you by surprise. No surprises there. I would like to thank the many, many people who called, instant messaged (yes, a lot of you are online with me every day), or sent email, commending our efforts to stay in the AS/400 game while letting me make a decent living (so I hope) by having two jobs. It shouldn’t take two jobs, but that’s life in general and my life in particular.

    Not all of the feedback was positive, of course. This first bit

    …

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  • IBM Kills Free Blade Deal for i Shops, Discounts Blade Chassis and Switches

    September 22, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    Since October 2007, IBM has been offering free BladeCenter blade server configurations to i shops, particularly for those acquiring System i iron or upgrades to it. In March, IBM tweaked this deal, making the spending limits on new or upgraded i machines larger and requiring customers to buy more features to get their free BladeCenter H chassis with a few HS21 Xeon-based blades inside. Last week, IBM killed off that deal, and replaced it with a nominal Web discount on switches used in BladeCenter boxes as well as on the chasses themselves.

    The Web discount deal is not limited strictly

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  • Help/Systems Adds MSI Systems Integrators to Partner Program

    September 22, 2008 Dan Burger

    It’s no coincidence that many of the people who deride the i platform as being a relic often have no idea about the analytical tools and automated operations available for this platform. This isn’t a problem tied to a lack of tools or a lackluster technology. Modern business intelligence (BI) and system automation tools are available from a variety of vendors for the box. The fact is, the AS/400 and its successors have had features that are just now available on other platforms–features that are hyped as if they are leading edge.

    One real problem at i shops, however, is

    …

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  • NEC Teams Up with IBM and Partners on Chip Fabrication Tech

    September 22, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    The electronics division of Japanese tech conglomerate NEC has joined up with IBM and its chip partners in New York state, known as the Fishkill Alliance, to work on perfecting 32 nanometer chip-making processes.

    IBM and its partners, which includes Chartered Semiconductor, Freescale Semiconductor, Infineon Technologies, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, and Toshiba, are working through the alliance to perfect the high-k/metal gate process technologies that will be deployed using 32 nanometer etching equipment. IBM’s current Power6 chips use 65 nanometer processes, and Big Blue is getting set to ramp up the water-immersion 45 nanometer processes, possibly for a Power6+ bump in

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  • Lenovo ThinkServer: The Sales Pitch Sounds Familiar

    September 22, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    As expected, Chinese PC and server maker Lenovo Group last week launched its first X64 servers that it is selling outside of its home market. The five new ThinkServers, as the machines are called to mirror the ThinkPad laptop brand Lenovo got when it acquired IBM‘s PC business in late 2004, are ironically based on Big Blue’s own xSeries (now Modular Systems) rack and tower servers.

    Lenovo is launching two rack servers and three tower servers, which it says it will sell to small and medium businesses directly and through its own (and non-IBM) channel on a global basis.

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  • Look for an Interim i Release Next Year, and i 6.2 in Early 2010

    September 15, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    As some of you know, IBM hosted two Power Systems Technical Universities in Chicago last week–one for i nerds and the other for AIX and Linux techies. As we went to press with this issue of the newsletter, some news was beginning to filter back into the cosmic ether–OK, really my email and my telephone, nothing cosmic about it–about what IBM is telling the i crowd. There’s nothing earth shattering so far, but some interesting points.

    First, the Virtual I/O Server that, as the name suggests, virtualizes disk, tape, and networking I/O for JS12 and JS22 blade servers running the

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  • Power 550 i Edition Versus Windows: Get Big Discounts on i Software

    September 15, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    In last week’s issue of The Four Hundred, I did the first in a series of articles comparing the Power Systems i Edition platform to other competitive platforms. In that case, I compared entry Power 520 rack servers and JS12 blade servers in the new BladeCenter S chassis to ProLiant alternatives running Windows from Hewlett-Packard. I was gratified to see that the i platforms were absolutely competitive with the Windows iron, at least when comparing machines with system software suitable for online transaction processing.

    This week, I am not as happy, since the Power 550 M50 machines, thanks

    …

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  • Forrester Says IT Spending Is Choppy Across Industries and Geographies

    September 15, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    Like many of you who have been in the IT industry for a few decades, I watch the ebb and flow of IT spending as IT budgets meet the hard realities or thrilling exuberance of the business environments in particular industries and geographies. With the steady stream of bad economic news–I do not need to get into the litany, since I know all readers of The Four Hundred are informed citizens of the world–it is no surprise we are as jumpy as the economies we participate in. And, IT spending, according to a recent study from Forrester Research, reflects

    …

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