I spend a lot of time thinking about hardware and systems software because, quite frankly, that is what I get paid to do in addition to being something that I am personally interested in given the fact that systems quite literally run the world. But a system, that magical combination of processors, storage, and the code necessary to make it usable by business logic encoded in higher-level languages, is perfectly useless without applications.

It is not lost on any of you, I know full well, that the computer that this newsletter is dedicated to was launched as the Application System/400,

Every aspect of your business is bombarded by the message that modernization is the key to happiness. IT is just one piece of the puzzle. And even that puzzle has dozens of pieces that require decisions on whether to replace or refurbish. Replacing may result in the biggest benefits, but often there are no guarantees, particularly if what’s in place is working. Finding what’s not working is the first step and then deciding if you can improve what you have without replacing investments in hardware and infrastructure is the next step. Let’s take storage for example.

Disk-based backup is one

The chip heads at IBM‘s Research and Microelectronics divisions have had a busy week, showing off their new memory and computing toys at the IEEE’s International Electron Devices Meeting in Washington, D.C., last week. Some of the chip technology that Big Blue was showing off to its peers is far out into the future, but it could end up in systems sooner than you might think.

As you old AS/400 shops are well aware, IBM used to make its own memory chips and disk drives for its systems and that memory was designed and fabbed in the same Rochester,

Twain and Corleone, the unsung duo of economic prognostication, aptly describe two probable scenarios for IT in the coming year. One prospect is hopeful and the other is cautionary. One provides reason for celebration, the other frustration. In one scenario, we are the masters of our fate, in the other, not so much.

“Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”–Mark Twain

“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”–Michael Corleone

First the good news.

Who knew that Sam Clemens was a closet economist? Indeed, predictions of economic collapse appear to be premature. The

If your apps all work through a web browser or are written in agnostic Java, relax. Don’t bother reading this. But if Windows grips some of your apps, as it does at most IBM i shops, there are things going on you had better watch. Until recently, Windows dominated client environments. Not anymore. ARM-based devices running iOS (the Apple operating system, not the IBM midrange one) or Android or BlackBerry OS outsell X86 machines running Windows. Windows on ARM won’t close the gap. Windows 9 might run mainly on cloud servers with island clients a second thought. When you say

The strange brews have been concocted. The three dozen fruitcakes of various sizes have been baked, soaked in bourbon, wine, and cognac, and wrapped up in fondant, waiting to be shipped. Some of the Christmas shopping has been done, but there’s still more to go and not a lot of time. The holiday meal menu is being pondered and tweaked. And now is the time for the good people at IT Jungle to take a well-deserved break from the rat race that is the news business.

As it has been for several decades now, it is my great

Good article. I agree with the complexity from an i-perspective, and liked your detailed analysis. I would like to add another point. I think blades in general are at an awkward junction. I work at a large Intel shop right now, with a mix of Windows (Windows 2000, Windows 2003, and Windows 2008 server) as well as Red Hat Linux (4.X thru 6). Several years ago they started moving from a standard rack mount to blade configuration. A funny thing happened on the journey. It’s called virtualization. Long story short, VM’ing everything has minimalized the need for blades.

Instead, you

IBM last week announced plans to acquire two software companies, including DemandTec, a provider of software that helps retailers make pricing, promotion, and assortment decisions, and Cúram Software, which makes software used by governments to streamline the delivery and administration of social services.

IBM exited the ERP space years ago and has since professed an aversion to getting back into the core business application space, which it insists it is leaving to its business partners. On its IBM i server platform, for example, IBM partners with dozens of ISVs, like Infor, SAP, JDA Software, Manhattan

The inventive PHP training project at the Southeast Michigan iSeries User Group (SEMiUG), reported in this newsletter in September, is nearly completed according to SEMiUG president Laura Ubelhor. The idea for the training project began with Ubelhor, who saw a great learning opportunity for local user group members by enlisting the support of a nearby company where the PHP programming could be put into use.

Not quite two months ago, 28 members of the local user group signed up to participate in this project and four teams were created. Ubelhor took the role of project manager and DEXTECH, an

Last week, The Four Hundred reported on the quarterly server sales and shipments presented by Gartner, and this week we get a second opinion on the market from IDC, which looks at the system racket a little bit differently from its box counting peer.

Gartner measures server sales each quarter as they are peddled to users from either the vendors directly or their reseller channels, while IDC looks only at the factory revenue at the manufacturer level. And each presents, to the public at least, a slightly different set of dicing and slicing of products by operating system,