Green screens scare the daylights (actually not my first choice of words) out of me. Like great white sharks and vampire bats, they have their place in the world. But I don’t want to go to that place. Most people would probably agree with me about the sharks and the bats. There are many RPG and COBOL programmers, however, who are perfectly comfortable in a green-screen world. What in the name of modern application development are they thinking?

There is a reason people use the term computer science rather than computer history. IT is an ongoing endeavor. You have probably

Systems management, security, and analytics software maker Help/Systems continued on its acquisition tear as 2012 came to a close, and last week announced that it had bought Dartware, which peddles a popular system monitoring tool called InterMapper. The move will allow Help/Systems to better expand into the Windows, Linux, and Unix system management, monitoring, and job scheduling markets that are adjacent to the OS/400 and IBM i market that it grew out of.

Dartware comes out of the networking corridor that wraps around Boston and extends into New Hampshire. (There’s a reason Network World magazine was up there, after

SAP last week made the major leap of officially supporting the use of its HANA in-memory database to power SAP BusinessSuite, its flagship enterprise software. Putting HANA in charge of managing analytical and transactional applications and their data simultaneously marks a huge architectural change for the German ERP giant, and it shows that the company is not afraid to take chances. Breaking the barrier between transactional and analytical data will pay off, SAP says, because it will allow businesses to “analyze and predict instantly.”

Ever since IBM invented it and Oracle popularized it 30-plus years ago, the relational database management

“I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate.” Better yet to be a success at something you love and to remain lucid and funny past your hundredth birthday. But Naftaly Birnbaum was an anomaly. He knew what he wanted to do by age seven. Talent and singular focus propelled a career that spanned vaudeville, radio, television, and film. By the time of his death, he was a national icon best known by his adopted stage name, George Burns.

Characterizing career success can be as elusive

A year ago, after taking the helm of IBM, Ginni Rometty reshuffled some executive assignments, and one of the things she did after moving up and out of the company’s Global Services and sales organizations to become the company’s CEO was to get executives in place for the eventual retirement of her former peer at Global Services, general manager Mike Daniels. As 2013 got started, Rometty let IBMers know in an internal memo that Global Services was being split into two bits again, that was because Daniels was retiring on March 31.

Several years ago, before it was clear

Like the rest of us, the analysts at Computer Economics want to know what IT shops are planning to do in terms of capital and operational spending this year. And so the company did a survey in the fourth quarter to take the pulse at IT shops around the world, which in North America at least were jittery because of the elections and the looming Fiscal Cliff issues in the United States.

The survey is the basis of the company’s Outlook for IT Spending and Staffing in 2013 report, which was just released. Computer Economics did in-depth surveys of

Most of us who have managed to stay employed during the last few years of tough economic times are just grateful to be working. Economic unrest has forced companies to drastically downsize or completely shut down, and IT departments have not been spared as many businesses struggle to survive. In many ways, the IT department has done better than other parts of companies, thanks to the ubiquity and necessity of computing, but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been stress.

The good news is that IT pros will see an improvement in pay this year, according to the 2013 IT Salary

It has been so long since IBM was not the company at the top of the list of firm issued utility patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that no one can remember who used to be at the top. With the rankings for 2012, Big Blue has been the undisputed leader since 1992, when it was in the middle of both a recession and an identity crisis and yet kept investing in research and development.

As we explain every year when this story rolls around in January, the USPTO stopped doing official counts and publicizing the number of

Finally, the day has come: IBM i shops on the search for young talent have a dedicated job board to turn to. We have been hearing for years how companies have a difficult time locating people with the specific skills to take on entry-level jobs. There have been fears that the talent pool was drying up. At the same time, colleges teaching IBM i skills as part of their computer science curriculum have not always been successful in placing graduates with companies that had job openings. It has been a frustrating disconnect.

A job board has been on the IBM

RPG & DB2 Summit Adds Analytics, BI To Agenda

The RPG & DB2 Summit, a twice-annual, subject-focused conference hosted by System i Developer, will take place March 19 through 21 in Atlanta, Georgia. The event is billed as “an interactive, total-immersion experience to RPG and DB2 for i developers who want to stay abreast of the latest advancements and learn how to apply specific RPG and DB2 techniques to keep their software applications vibrant and innovative.” Registration is now open.

The RPG and DB2 topics covered include RPG IV, ILE, and modular programming; embedded SQL, DB2 for i capabilities,