• IBM Layoffs Started Last Week; Time for a New Kind of Corporation

  January 26, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Two weeks ago, we told you about the rumors running around that IBM would cut somewhere from 10,000 to 16,000 of its worldwide workforce, which numbers some 400,000 people, so it could keep its profits growing in the double digits even as its revenues are expected to drop in the first half of 2009. Those layoffs have, according to reports from IBMers, began. IBM has not confirmed that there are layoffs, except to note in its financial reports last week that it is continually rebalancing its workforce, which means firing people where business is slack or projects are not panning

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• IT Workers Conflicted, Dice Salary Survey Reveals

  January 26, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Technology and engineering career site Dice has put out its annual salary survey to take the pulse on compensation rates out there in the tech market, and the news is good and bad. Average salaries were up at the end of 2008 compared to 2007, but IT workers are plenty jumpy because of the economy and what their employers might do to cut costs if things get worse or even just stay bad. Dice put together its 2008-09 Annual Salary Survey by gathering up information from 19,444 tech workers between August and November last year. This was, you will remember,

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• IBM Opens App Services Center in Michigan, Support Center in Iowa

  January 26, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  While IBM has been making layoffs around the United States and Japan, and perhaps all around the world for all we know, two Big Ten states here in America at least got some good news recently from Big Blue. The state government of Michigan, which is reeling from the latest pop in a 35-year implosion of the indigenous car market, has worked out a deal with IBM to plunk a global delivery center for application services in the East Lansing campus of Michigan State University. (Penn State, 49; MSU, 18) The center is, according to IBM, the first

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• Dataram Offers Try and Buy Deal for Server Memory

  January 26, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Clone memory maker Dataram was for many years a little gun shy about saying that it offered clone memory that was supported on AS/400 and iSeries boxes, but the convergence of the i and p lines by IBM presents the company with some opportunities to make money and to help i and p shops save money. Last week, Dataram, which is located in Princeton, New Jersey, and which has been making clone memory since 1967, said that it was initiating a free “try and buy” program to help customers get clone memory, which can cost half as much as memory

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• BOSaNOVA Outlines the Green Effects of Thin Clients

  January 26, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There are a lot of reasons why you might want to think about getting rid of PCs for a lot of end users at your company, but cutting back on energy use and therefore lowering your carbon footprint is something that more companies are taking seriously. Quite frankly, it is low hanging fruit, like using those swirly fluorescent bulbs instead of incandescent lighting. To make its case, BOSaNOVA has put together a white paper promoting thin clients, which it makes a living selling. The company cites an estimate that has made the rounds in the PC-TC wars, claiming that if

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• AS/400 LUG: Friends in High Places

  January 19, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As members of the AS/400 and successor communities, you all exercise a certain amount of influence over IBM and its i platform, just by virtue of the checkbook that you, your CIOs, or the owners of your companies have in their desk drawers. This influence is, of course, distributed across the 200,000-plus i community. It is diffuse, even if it is bright. But the candle power of an organization called the AS/400 Large User Group is quite a bit higher, and focused like a laser beam on IBM and its i platform. Over the years, we’ve all heard about the

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• Global 2009 IT Spending Will be Up, Down, Forrester Says

  January 19, 2009 Alex Woodie

  Global IT spending will decline by 3 percent to $1.66 trillion this year when measured in U.S. dollars, according to Forrester Research. That’s the first time global IT spending has declined since 2002, the analyst group says. However, when Forrester prognosticators looked into the future using their special local-currency colored glasses, they found that IT spending will actually go up by just a hair, which is 2.5 percent. Since the value of money from different countries is always going up or going down relative to other currencies, smart people around the world decided they needed a stable way to

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• IBM Piles on the Patents, Promises to Publish Plenty

  January 19, 2009 Dan Burger

  Can anyone remember a time when IBM wasn’t the dominate technology company when it comes to patents? This is the 16th consecutive year that Big Blue has piled up more patents than any of its competitors. Sixteen years is a long time for anyone to stay on top of anything. IBM makes it look easy. It removed the element of suspense in this annual announcement a long time ago. No one asks “Who won?” It’s more like: “How many patents did they get this year?” In 2008, IBM was awarded 4,186 U.S. patents. No company has ever crossed the 4,000-patent

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• As I See It: Test of Character

  January 19, 2009 Victor Rozek

  A flock of wild turkeys regularly comes to the house, pressing their little wrinkled heads against the windows, hoping to persuade my wife to toss some corn their way. While they wait, they work the ground beneath the bird feeders, competing with the squirrels for what the birds knock down, tearing up the grass with their large clawed feet, and adorning our patio with whatever remains after turkeys digest corn, bugs, and bird food. They like it here. Too tough to be tasty to humans, too fast to be caught by most predators, they strut and gobble and make the

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• IBM Helps Partners Sell Software to Midrange Shops

  January 19, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Before the U.S. economy went into meltdown, and before we knew that it had been in recession for a year (well, we kinda all knew, but the recession wasn’t officially called until after the presidential election), the common thinking out there was that IT spending growth at small and medium businesses was going to be significantly higher than at larger enterprises, which spend lots more per company but which tend to tighten their belts first and tightly when the economy hits the skids. It is hard to say if the SMB space is going to be able to take

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