• A Word Cloud of IBM Server Brand Names

  May 19, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  A few weeks ago, I was admonished by a loyal reader of this newsletter that the rebranding of the System i and i5/OS platform was far from over. That while those of us in the i-ntelligentsia (that’s my pun, not his, and I don’t actually like it), by which I mean members of the reseller community, those in the press and analyst community, and those who sell applications for the i platform, may be up to speed with and maybe in some cases on page with what IBM has done, as for the actual customer base, this whole name game

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• IDC Cautiously Reaffirms IT Spending Projections for 2008

  May 19, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When something bad finally happens, at least you don’t have to be anxious about it any more. But that’s about the only good thing about bad things happening. While anxiety is no fun, it is safe to say that IT managers and the bean counters who control their budgets much prefer that to the kind of panic that grips a national economy or even the global economy. When businesses are anxious, they cut IT spending back. In the case of 2008, so far that seems to mean slower growth, not actual decline. That’s the projection that the market researchers and

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• Aberdeen Ranks the Top 100 Tech Companies

  May 19, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The consultants at Aberdeen Group, now a division of market researcher and mail list builder Harte-Hanks, have just finished up a massive research project to put together the Annual State of the Market Report for the information technology sector. As part of the report, Aberdeen’s experts have used customer input to create a ranking of the top 100 most influential technology companies. The 2008 edition of the report, which costs a whopping $1,995 for 161 pages of arts and charts and analysis, is available at this link, if you happen to have some extra budget money lying

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• IBM Creates Value Packs for Power 570 and 595 Servers

  May 19, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When the iSeries and System i product lines were distinct from the pSeries and System p lines, IBM was perfectly happy to roll some extra goodies into 570 and 595 configurations to sweeten the deal. But the Power Systems convergence means unbundling the parts of a configuration and giving them prices, which means the i marketing folks need to roll those goodies into a separate package–because they certainly still want to sweeten the deals. To that end, IBM has created Value Packs for the high-end Power 570 and Power 595 servers, which give customers software and vouchers good for the

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• Jack Henry’s Profits Hit by Hardware Sales Slump

  May 19, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As one of the few relatively large and public companies that sells lots of hardware, software, and services into OS/400 and i5/OS shops, Jack Henry & Associates is something of a bellwhether for the i ecosystem, even if it is doing business exclusively in the financial services sector. In the fiscal third quarter of 2008, Jack Henry was able to boost sales quite a bit considering the adversity right now in the financial sector, but profits came under pressure. In the third quarter ended March 31, Jack Henry’s total revenues rose by 11 percent to $187.9 million, but gross profits

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• Oracle Snaps Up Insurance Software Specialist AdminServer

  May 19, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Database and enterprise application software maker Oracle continued its acquisition binge last week, acquiring a relatively unknown but important and fast-growing niche player in the insurance sector called AdminServer. AdminServer, which is based in Chester, Pennsylvania (a suburb of Philadelphia), was a consultancy and programming services company when it was founded in 1998, and at that time it began developing a Java-based set of insurance policy and annuity management programs to take on the vast base of homegrown RPG and COBOL insurance applications running out there on midrange, mainframe, and other gear. AdminServer certified its Java applications, which is

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• The i Platform Roadmap Is a Work in Progress

  May 12, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With the Power Systems convergence more or less accomplished, on paper at least if not in the minds and data centers of System i and System p customers, and with Bill Zeitler, general manager of IBM‘s Systems and Technology Group retiring on August 1 and the company’s supply chain expert, Bob Moffatt, taking over the server unit at that time, tongues are a-wagging about the long-term future of the i platform. It was a coincidence that Neil Palmer’s article in this newsletter last week, There’s No i in Future, But Is There a Future in i?, came out

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• IBM Loses Two Key Executives to Retirement–Really

  May 12, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The deck chairs are changing once again at the good ship Big Blue, and this time, not only are the top brass moving into new roles at the company, but some heavy hitters at IBM are trading in their office chairs for Adirondack chairs at their vacation hangouts as they retire from the company. It is hard to get any bluer than Bill Zeitler and Nick Donofrio, but a new team of managers is now being given a chance to try now that these two are retiring from the company in the wake of their impending 60th birthdays. I know

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• Java Performance Is OS Agnostic on Power6 Gear

  May 12, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Way back when, in the dawn of time–well, about a decade ago when IBM first caught the Java bug and decided that this would be the language of choice on its commercial servers and their operating systems–the software engineering teams in Rochester, Minnesota, and Toronto, Ontario, worked diligently to take advantage of the 64-bit addressing that OS/400 had and that many Unixes of the time lacked. The idea was simple: If Java was going to be the imposed lingua franca for future application development, then OS/400 would speak it fluently–and fast. At the time, when the 64-bit memory and symmetric

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• As I See It: Soothing the Savage Programmer

  May 12, 2008 Victor Rozek

  Dr. Masaru Emoto has a gentle, curious face and a facile mind with which he probes the bumpy intersection of science and metaphysics. Using a dark-field microscope with photographic capabilities, he researches the effects of external factors on the molecular structure of water. Not just such obvious influences as pollution, but much more esoteric factors not commonly thought to possess substance-altering properties, such as thoughts, words, and music. The notion that sound or thought could alter the molecular shape of water seems ludicrous, but Emoto’s extraordinary photos suggest otherwise. Water labeled with positive words such as “love,” “gratitude,” and “appreciation,”

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