Like many of you out there in IT Land, I am not a member of the Digerati. A long, long time ago–about the time I got married and had better things to do with my money–I stopped being on the cutting edge of personal technology and I started going wicked conservative when it came to my PC, laptop, cell phone, and other gadgetry. This is a theme that will be familiar to many AS/400 shops, particularly those whose machines are paid for and are doing their work, 24×7, without any fuss. If it works, don’t spend money.

It is getting

Well, it looks that that future OS/400-i operating system release is going to be called i 7.1 after all, and thank heavens because as I said a few weeks ago, I was getting a bit tired of saying the next i/OS release, possibly called i 6.2 or i 7.1, due sometime in 2010. According to various customer and business partner sources who have been briefed by IBM in recent weeks, not only has the name been decided upon, but i5/OS V5R4 has had its life extended.

The naming convention for an operating system used to be a big deal

Back in the day, IBM blew a pretty loud trumpet touting its mastery of technology. These days, the IBM trumpet plays a different song. It no longer touts technology. IBM prefers to sell business solutions. Take, for instance, its Smart Business program that focuses on mid-market customers that need to find, purchase, deploy, and maintain a business computing solution that is application oriented and keeps things as simple as possible. If it sounds like re-inventing the AS/400, it is.

It’s also a whole lot more. The keeping things simple part of Smart Business brings in a services element relating to

It was November 1st and the Pacific Northwest was so vibrantly attired in Autumnal splendor that you’d think God was showing off. I was riding my bike along the Willamette River, through dappled sunlight and a steady sprinkle of golden leaves. The air was crisp and scented with mulch, and the river sparkled like molten silver as it made its unhurried journey to the sea. It was unexpectedly warm and dry for this time of year, and I rode without urgency or agenda, past frolicking dogs, stately blue herons, and lawnfuls of Canadian geese.

Beyond the rose garden, the path

The FBI on Friday arrested two programmers who allegedly created the AS/400 applications that generated the fake account statements that helped conceal Bernie Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme from victims and authorities for nearly two decades. The programmers, who started working for Madoff in the early 1990s, face up to 30 years in prison if convicted. Also, a new report uncovers more details about the programs, processes, and personnel involved with the AS/400 at the heart of Madoff’s scam.

Jerome O’Hara, 46, of Malverne, New York, and George Perez, 43, of East Brunswick, New Jersey, were arrested at their homes

As is usually the case at IBM, the official convergence is often announced long after various product lines were already well on their way toward a confluence behind the scenes. And so it is with a new unit of Big Blue’s Systems and Technology Group, which put all of its operating systems and hypervisor virtualization software under the control of one group back in early September, but is just talking about it now.

The Systems Software division within STG now has control of all of IBM’s own operating systems and hypervisors, and is being tasked with bringing commonality of

I told you there would be a recurring theme as I watch different server makers and their partners try to usurp the Integration banner that the AS/400 has been waving for more than two decades–and that the theme would be that I get annoyed that no one remembers a movie we all saw a long time ago.

My latest annoyance on the integration front is not the sweet nothings that Oracle and Sun Microsystems have been whispering mostly into the ears of Sun’s server customers but also to government regulators and investors that a Sun-Oracle combination would allow Oracle to

The mood around master IT resellers Arrow Electronics and Avnet must be a lot more chipper than it was a year ago, with both companies reporting better-than-expected sales of enterprise computing gear in their most recent quarters.

Taking the two companies in alphabetical order (we don’t play favorites here at The Four Hundred), Arrow reported revenues of $3.67 billion in the third quarter, down 14.5 percent from the year-ago quarter. Net income collapsed by 83.5 percent to $12.6 million, which certainly doesn’t sound like great news. Thing is, the news has been worse in the past year.

Arrow said

IT spending is not uniform across various industries, and when times are booming or busting, the increase or decrease in IT budgets is also not uniform. This year, some industries are being hit harder than others by the economic downturn.

According to the analysts at Gartner, worldwide spending across the 15 vertical industries that the market researcher tracks will fall by 6.8 percent in 2009, to $2.28 trillion.

The good news for those of you who like to look ahead (which is natural enough when the economy has been rocky, as it has been since early 2008) is that Gartner

In one of the truly unexpected, and some might even say bizarre, deals of 2009, IT powerhouse Hewlett-Packard last week said that it would pony up a cool $2.7 billion in cash to buy 3Com, a venerable networking equipment provider that was once a challenger to Cisco Systems but not so much any more.

HP, of course, inherited a networking business of its own when it acquired Compaq in 2001, which we all know and love as the HP ProCurve business. While HP makes well-regarded and reasonably priced switches, Cisco has the more exotic gear (which commands high profits)