There are a few operating systems in the world that get both the tags “legacy” and “venerable” attached to them, one denoting a kind of dismissal or outright disdain and the other connoting respect and maybe even sometimes awe. IBM‘s MVS platform, which has also been called OS/390 and more recently known as z/OS, is certainly venerable and legacy if you don’t want to be accurate or generous, and so is OS/400, formerly known as i5/OS and now IBM i. And so is the VMS operating system for VAX, Alpha, and Itanium systems from Digital Equipment Corp,

In early July we ran an article titled The New Normal For The IBM i Job Market, where we explored some of challenges that IBM i professionals are having in finding new jobs, particularly in California, and the structural changes that are impacting the workforce as a whole. There’s no doubt that these are tough times for many people, but those challenges also create opportunities for IBM i pros who have the ability to capitalize on them.

There are many variables that factor into the employment equation and determine whether and how people are matched up with jobs. For

What makes working worthwhile? A paycheck that puts a smile on your face and a work environment that doesn’t smother your personal life? How important is it to be working for a company with a progressive approach to IT with people who want to grow professionally and who want to be part of what drives business success?

If it was your responsibility to determine which technologies would be most useful to your business and how they fit in a budget and a skill set, could you lead those projects?

“There is a line in the job descriptions of all my

Lauren, Danielle, Lily, Rosco, and Zosia have at least two things in common: they are siblings, and they no longer have a father. Their Dad had been rather successful by all accounts, able to secure the bounty of Silicon Valley for himself and his family. But it wasn’t enough. Or perhaps it was too much. His death aboard his yacht at the hands of a distasteful-looking, tattooed prostitute will forever filter whatever his children thought they knew about their Father.

Forrest Hayes’ demise had all the requisites of a media carnival: wealth, scandal, and drugs. Add to that a whiff

It has been almost a year since we found out about a company called PowerRuby, a coming together of the open source Ruby on Rails development environment and the IBM Power Systems user community. “There’s something special going on with Ruby and Rails,” we were told by one of the brightest young minds in the IBM i community, Aaron Bartell. Notable IBM i evangelists Steve Will, Alison Butterill, Jon Paris, and others eagerly encouraged IBM i developers to try it.

A lot has happened for PowerRuby, although you might shake your head after reading the beta test site on

IBM scientists last week rolled out SyNAPSE, a “neurosynaptic” chip that boasts the equivalent of 1 million programmable neurons and 256 million programmable synapses. The miniscule chip could hasten the transformation of society by enabling new brain-like “neuromorphic” applications, such as helping the blind see again, and perhaps other less philanthropic adventures.

The introduction of the postage stamp-sized SyNAPSE chip, which is built on Samsung Electronic‘s 28 nanometer technology, is the culmination of a decade of research by IBM into non-von Neumann architectures, which have been the standard in computer design since 1946.

IBM says it has made a

We are more than halfway through the year, and the forecasters at IDC have taken a look at the state of the economies of the world and the political situation around the globe and come up with a new IT spending forecast for 2014.

The good news is that after revising its forecast down back in May, spending is now projected to rise as much this year as it did last year. To be specific, IT spending will rise by 4.1 percent as expressed in U.S. dollars and at 4.5 percent in constant currency. Three months ago, the economists

It looks like IBM was not happy with some of the initial prices it set for memory and processing capacity on the new Power8 systems that were launched back in April.

In announcement letter 314-088, IBM raised the price of the core activation on the EPXH feature card. This card has a 12-core Power8 processor (really two half Power8 chips slipped into the same socket) that plugs into the Power S824, which is a two-socket machine that can run IBM i, AIX, or Linux. Its clock speed is set at 3.52 GHz. Back in April, when the machine debuted,

Cautiously optimistic is a popular description of the business climate. It is most often said with the emphasis on optimistic, but it seems most businesses, in reality, emphasize the cautious. The IT business is a lot like that, but what we are seeing is an unevenness that spins the weathervane toward and then away from the direction of optimistic.

You really can’t find a better example of this than Avnet, the huge electronic components and IT distribution business that moves IBM products, plus plenty of products and services from other top-tier vendors, through the sales channels. Avnet just closed

What do you get when you cross consulting services with e-commerce? You get IT assessments from IBM that are only a mouse click away. Order online. Delivery within 24 hours. Credit card payments accepted. It’s called IBM Global Business Services Online and it comes in five flavors: social media, mobile app migration, application development analysis, and value-enhancement examinations of either SAP or Oracle applications.

These are not designed to address large-scale engagements and complex issues. The goal is to assess the current situation and recommend a product and a plan for accomplishing an improved and IBM-approved outcome. And the targets