• Jack Kuehler, Former IBM President and Vice Chairman, Dies at 76

  January 12, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is not often when an engineer rises to the top ranks of a company, not even when that company makes electromechanical and then computing components, as IBM has done for nine decades now. But Jack Kuehler, a former president and vice chairman of the board at Big Blue, was one such man. Kuehler died on December 20 of Parkinson’s disease, according to his obituary in the New York Times. Kuehler was born in Nebraska, but he was very much part of the early Silicon Valley culture that exists in large part in that location, by the way, because

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• VAI Nets U.K.-Based Kingfisher for Reseller Partnership

  January 12, 2009 Alex Woodie

  New York-based VAI continued its thrust into international markets last week when it announced a new reseller agreement with Kingfisher Associates. The English software consultancy will sell and service VAI’s ERP software, and perhaps provide a jumping off point for continued European expansion by VAI in the future. Founded in 1988, Kingfisher Associates provides custom RPG and Java programming services to companies that utilize the IBM Power Systems server (formerly AS/400). The company, which is based in southern England, primarily serves small and mid size businesses, and targets the AS/400 (Power Systems) industrial strongholds of manufacturing, distribution, and retail.

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• Lawson Sales Hit by Economic Downturn in Fiscal Q2

  January 12, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Midrange ERP software maker Lawson Software reported its financial results for the second quarter of its fiscal 2009, and like many other companies in the IT sector, the quarter saw sales dampen thanks to the global economic turmoil. For the quarter ended November 30, Lawson said that its overall sales fell by 5.6 percent to $206.3 million. Software license fees, a barometer of sorts for economic activity, fell by 8.9 percent to just over $30 million, while maintenance fees rose by 6.3 percent to $90.1 million. Consulting revenues, another economic indicator (but probably not as good as license sales in

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• Infinite Software Buys Another HP Reseller

  January 12, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  AS/400 and mainframe legacy application rehosting software supplier Infinite Software has acquired another reseller of Hewlett-Packard. Last Friday, Infinite announced it has bought a controlling stake in Roundstone Systems, its second one since forming a partnership last year with HP to sell its rehosting software. Roundstone Systems, which is located in Oakland, California, was founded in January 2003 and was one of HP’s fastest growing resellers that year. The company has partnerships with HP, Microsoft, Oracle, Brocade Communications, VMware, and Novell, and has anchored its business on selling HP enterprise and blade servers

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• The Internet: Beyond the Wild, Wild West; Think Stone Age

  January 12, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The PandaLabs malware detection and analysis lab maintained by security software maker Panda Security has announced its annual security report for the just-ended 2008. And man, is it ugly out there on the Internet, or rather, in there on the PCs and servers of the world. In 2008, PandaLabs says that it detected an average of 35,000 malware samples a day, and 22,000 of those detected were new infections launched by hackers. (No wonder antivirus software eats so much resources, eh?) PandaLabs says that the total count of malware threats in 2008 was above 15 million, which is more than

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• Now What?

  January 5, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Welcome to 2009, everybody. For the first time in I can’t remember how long, I actually took much of the vacation that was my due, and I spent lots of time with friends and family eating and drinking and horsing around. I feel human again, even if it is in relation to what still remains a troubling economy and a difficult world. Guild Companies, which publishes the Four Hundred stack of newsletters, made it through 2008, and provided there are a whole lot less shocks this year, it looks like we will be here to serve the AS/400 community in

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• IT Doing Better Than Other Careers in 2009

  January 5, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There are worse careers to be in than information technology, apparently, even if the pressure is increasing to do more with less and there is always the threat of outsourcing or some other services-style IT looming just out beyond the next paycheck. According to the most recent job forecast put together by CareerBuilder.com, IT is among the few areas where managers expect to add employees in the coming year. While the CareerBuilder.com survey does not focus exclusively on IT hiring, as do surveys from Robert Half Technology, the latest CareerBuilder.com survey does provide a comparison and contrast of

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• Strengthening Dollar Whacks Oracle’s Second Fiscal Quarter

  January 5, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As odd as this may seem, a strengthening U.S. dollar hurt the financial results that software giant Oracle reported for its second quarter of fiscal 2009 ended November 30. Considering the self-inflicted wounds in 2008 that the U.S. economy is trying to heal from, you might think that a stronger dollar would be a good thing. But as Oracle’s most recent results show, a strong dollar is only good when U.S. companies are buying a lot more stuff than overseas customers. But for U.S.-based multinational IT suppliers, a weak U.S. economy has been a bit of a boom as they

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• As I See It: The Rhythm of Things Unseen

  January 5, 2009 Victor Rozek

  It’s a new year, with an about-to-be new president, but the same old questions are on the collective minds of Americans, and they’re about the economy. “How the hell did this happen?” It’s the question Robert B. Parker calls humanity’s cry, and given the state of things, it should probably replace “In God We Trust” on our shrinking currency. The answer, as provided by George W. Bush, was “Wall Street got drunk,” and his solution was to throw more booze at it. We’ll have to wait for the new guy for a response that didn’t originate in a frat house.

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• Uncle Sam to Stop Buying Used IT Gear?

  January 5, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If you don’t buy or sell a lot of computer and networking hardware, then you will probably be perplexed about this story. Judging from the context of a recent government hearing on the topic, counterfeit IT gear is apparently a much bigger problem than many of us might think. The U.S. federal government is so annoyed by the problem that it held a hearing about implementing acquisition rules that would severely curtail the use of secondhand equipment among major government agencies. Back on November 18, the General Services Administration and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration placed an announcement in

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