• Readers Pipe Up on a Whole Bunch of Things

  February 2, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The people who read The Four Hundred tend to be a vocal, but polite bunch, which is a welcome and refreshing thing compared to how the rest of the people in the world sometimes talk to each other. Here’s some feedback we got on stories that have run thus far in 2009: Feedback on AS/400 LUG: Friends in High Places I guess it would be too much to ask to see the current unmet requirements list of this group. Sounds like their needs might be completely the opposite needs of a platform wanting to get new accounts. Also, it surely

  …

  Read more

• Head’s Up: Job Watcher Can Mess With LPARs

  February 2, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Our good friend Doug Bidwell, over at Power Systems reseller DLB Associates and who certainly still calls himself a ‘400 reseller, wanted to give you all a head’s up about some potential issues IBM has found with the Job Watcher performance monitoring tool for the OS/400 V5R3, i5/OS V5R4, and i 6.1 operating systems when running inside LPARs when it is collecting SQL information on the system. The iDoctor suite of tools, which include Job Watcher, are often used by IBM’s Rochester tech support team or by resellers to support their i platform customers. The iDoctor team sent out the

  …

  Read more

• Partnership Expands looksoftware’s Latin American Business

  February 2, 2009 Dan Burger

  For telecom and financial services companies that depend on Latin American BYTE software and the IBM System i, the partnership between looksoftware and BYTE, announced last week, will bring modernized applications with an improved user interface and better integration to the independent software vendor’s product lineup. Development and implementation of BYTE’s first application has already been completed. According to Homero Bosch, BYTE’s manager of distributors and channels, after “an intensive evaluation” of application modernization products was completed, it only took four weeks for the technical personnel at BYTE to generate a prototype, obtain final approval, and begin implementation of an

  …

  Read more

• Net Loss Doesn’t Prevent JDA’s Record Q4, Year

  February 2, 2009 Dan Burger

  JDA Software handed in a fourth quarter financial report showing a loss, but more importantly managed to ring up a gain in total revenue, which resulted in a record-breaking quarter and record-breaking year for the Scottsdale, Arizona, company with a substantial IBM i customer base. Fourth quarter revenue was bolstered by a 53 percent gain in software license sales. JDA’s fourth quarter ended December 31, 2008, and for that time frame the company reported total revenues of $106.2 million and software revenues of $34.3 million, compared to total revenues of $98.5 million and software revenues of $22.4 million for fourth

  …

  Read more

• Power Guru Prevails, Gets to Take Job at Apple

  February 2, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Well, that little drama has finally come to an end, and just in time for the 25th anniversary of the Apple Macintosh. Mark Papermaster, a Power processor and system chipset guru from IBM‘s Systems and Technology Group, is going to be allowed to go work as the head of Apple‘s iPod and iPhone hardware development, reporting to ailing chief executive officer, Steve Jobs. Papermaster took the job at Apple last October, and a few days later IBM sued Papermaster to block him from joining Apple. A few days after that, a Federal court judge on IBM’s home

  …

  Read more

• i Roadmaps: Here Be Dragons

  January 26, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When I was a kid, I was crazy about maps. In my family, even when I was quite young, when someone was lost, they tossed me the map to figure out where on earth we were. My Dad and Mom trusted me with the maps more than themselves, which I didn’t think of as peculiar until later in life. (I think visually. They don’t. My Dad thinks with his hands and can make or fix anything, and my Mom thinks with her mouth, and can cut right to the heart of the matter.) To this day, just about every place

  …

  Read more

• IBM Closes 2008 on a High, i Sales Unclear

  January 26, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Wall Street got a chance to catch its breath a little last Tuesday after the market closed when IBM announced its financial results for the fourth quarter, a quarter that was impacted by the economic crisis last summer and fall but one in which Big Blue nonetheless was able to pull out of the fire profit-wise by cutting costs. More importantly, perhaps, IBM’s top brass reaffirmed that they were on track, despite the state of the global economy, to meet aggressive profit targets. In the fourth quarter, which bore the brunt of the economic meltdown and which saw 1.53 million

  …

  Read more

• Data Warehouses: Know One When You See One?

  January 26, 2009 Dan Burger

  People may have problems defining a data warehouse. They may have problems designing and building a data warehouse, too. But that hasn’t slowed down the desire to get a better grasp on data and use it more effectively to drive the business and preserve revenues. “What many people describe as a data warehouse is actually a data mart or something else,” says Bill O’Connell, chief technology officer of data warehousing within IBM‘s Information Management division. What distinguishes a data warehouse is an enterprise design and a definition of the business problem to be solved, O’Connell says. The emphasis is

  …

  Read more

• The X Factor: Head in the Clouds

  January 26, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For a while now, people have been talking about utility-style computing, and as was the case a decade ago with application service providing, or ASPs, we are now being barraged with vendors coming out of the woodwork peddling cloud computing or somehow tying what they do to the idea of cloud computing. But the interesting development this time around is that cloud computing is a lot more affordable than ASP was, thanks to cheap iron, open source software, and inexpensive broadband Internet. These are all necessary conditions, of course, for cloudy, utility computing to take off, but they are far

  …

  Read more

• UNICOM Acquires Macro 4, Sees i OS Synergy with SoftLanding Tools

  January 26, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Earlier this month, UNICOM Systems announced the acquisition of Macro 4, a British developer of utilities and systems management tools for mainframe, System i, and Unix platforms. While the System z was Macro 4’s forte, UNICOM has put a surprising focus on its i OS offerings. Together with SoftLanding’s i OS change management offerings, UNICOM says it will have a “one stop shop” for enterprise computing customers, whether they run i OS, mainframe, or open systems. In the two and a half years since CICS tool vendor UNICOM shocked the market with its acquisition of i OS change management

  …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles