• More Details Emerge on Future Power7+ and Power8 Chips

  August 22, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back in early May, I gave you what little information I had been able to gather up on the impending Power7+ and future Power8 processor designs and their possible announcement dates in Power Systems machines. The data was a little thin, and intentionally so on the part of Big Blue. But with Oracle kicking up a big fuss over Intel‘s Itanium processor roadmap, which the software giant is saying is a dead end, it looks like IBM decided it was time to be a more specific. Not terribly more specific, mind you. Server makers and chip makers don’t

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• IBM Taps Software Exec For Power Systems Marketing

  August 22, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It’s summer and that is the traditional time that IBM makes changes in its executive lineup. At the end of July last year, Big Blue merged its Systems and Technology Group and Software Group into one giant behemoth under general manager Steve Mills while also gluing back together two halves of the Global Services giant that were artificially separated a few years back. This year, the changes in the Power Systems division are a little less dramatic, but important nonetheless. Jeff Howard, VP of System x marketing When IBM converged its System i and System p Power-based server units

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• EnterpriseDB Sets Sights on Oracle’s MySQL

  August 22, 2011 Alex Woodie

  It’s no secret that EnterpriseDB, the company that sells and supports commercial versions of the open source PostgreSQL database, is going after MySQL. The company, which says revenues are growing at a 2X annual pace, senses that Oracle is ostracizing its MySQL customers and partners–something that IBM i customers can relate to. But while PostgreSQL makes inroads in the X64 and Itanium markets, it’s not clear if the database will find a similar reception in Power Systems. MySQL is undoubtedly one of the commercial open source success stories of the last decade. The open source RDBMS found a

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• As I See It: Paying Attention

  August 22, 2011 Victor Rozek

  “How the hell did this happen?” The late fiction writer Robert B. Parker called it “humanity’s cry.” For those not paying attention, that always seems to be the question, after the fact. Why are jobs so scarce? Why did the deficit explode? What happened to the economy? Tardy but reasonable questions given the misinformation surrounding our seemingly rapid decline. If you’ve lost your job, or are fearful of losing it; if you’re searching for work but can’t find it; if you’re unable to make your mortgage payment, or know someone who has lost their home, it’d be nice to at

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• Mad Dog 21/21: How To Downgrade Your Business Partner

  August 22, 2011 Hesh Wiener

  According to IBM reseller Glasshouse Systems, Big Blue promised it wouldn’t give a rival the 21 percent extra discount Glasshouse was getting in the pending deal with financial services firm SEI. Glasshouse appreciated the incentive and poured extra effort into its sales effort at SEI Investments. Surprise! SEI jilted Glasshouse and signed with rival reseller Mainline. Glasshouse took a beating. The upshot, Glasshouse pleaded, was that IBM, that double-crosser, ought to make it whole. Stuff and nonsense, said Honorable Anita Brody. The Glasshouse claim fails; IBM prevails. The case is now a model for users

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• Big Blue Tweaks Red Hat Deal for Power Systems

  August 22, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM has updated a special Linux promotion it announced last year for Red Hat and SUSE Linux variants running on Power Systems machines. Under the Linux on Power Systems Capacity Upgrade on Demand offering in announcement letter 310-240, announced August 17 last year, IBM gave customers with spare and unused processor capacity on selected Power Systems machines freebie Linux licenses and memory capacity to support them. The deal offered free Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 or 5 and free SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 and 11 licenses on Power 570 servers using Power6 and Power6+ processors, Power 595 servers

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• IBM Cuts BNT Switch Tags, Adds Fibre Channel SAN Switches

  August 22, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As a long-time IBM customer, you are probably not used to the fact that there is an IBM System Networking division that sells data center and storage switches. And as a really long time IBM customer, as many AS/400 shops certainly are, you are probably wondering why the hell Big Blue sold off its networking business to Cisco Systems in 1999 and basically gave the company a decade of high margins. No matter. IBM has acquired and partnered to build up its own portfolio of switching products, and the company is eager to dislodge the incumbents whose switches are on

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• Services Power Jack Henry to Record Revenues in Fiscal 2011

  August 22, 2011 Dan Burger

  A strong showing on the services side of business has propelled Jack Henry and Associates to impressive gains in its Q4 of fiscal 2011 ended in July. This comes despite a weak economy and much turmoil in the banking industry as a result of bank failures and a stormy season of mergers and acquisitions in the credit union sector. JHA has long been a major contributor to the IBM i ecosystem. JHA president Tony Wormington, in a prepared document, stated, “We ended fiscal 2011 with record levels of revenue, gross profit and net income. Our company continues to prosper in

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• Kronos Sells Lots of HR Software On Premise and In Its Cloud

  August 22, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Workforce management software maker Kronos continues to grow despite the troubling job market in the United States. Perhaps people are trying to do a better job managing the people and expertise that they have? In its third fiscal quarter ended in July, Kronos, which is privately held, said that sales were up in the double-digits. Specifically, the company said that revenues were up 13.9 percent year-on-year to $210.8 million. Earnings before interest, taxes, and amortization (EBITA in the accounting lingo) rose by 27.6 percent, to $60.5 million. Software license sales were up over 30 percent, with sales of the absence

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• Status Update: Sick and Tired of Social Media

  August 22, 2011 Jenny Thomas

  Remember the good old days when managing your email inbox was your biggest time drain? Then along comes Tweets and Status Updates that have to be posted and monitored for responses, which can quickly eat up a chunk of your day. Before you know it, you’re in the throes of social media overload. It all started innocently enough. You were charged with getting your company into one of the growing menagerie of social media sites to see what it was all about, to keep up with the competition, or to make sure you didn’t get left behind in the digital

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