Backed by the private equity firm Candescent Partners, Quadrant Software today announced the acquisition of Business Computer Design Int’l. and its business partner ExcelSystems Software Development to create one of the larger IBM i software vendors. The companies will continue to operate as they are, no layoffs are planned, and BCD customers will see no immediate changes as a result of the deal, Quadrant CEO Steve Woodard says.

Chicago-based BCD Software and ExcelSystems (ESDI), which is based in British Columbia, Canada, will become entities under the Quadrant brand, joining two other Quadrant companies, SoftBase and NetLert. The combination of

Fighting for the IBM i platform is a skill. And like any skill it requires forethought, training, and repetition. The platform has plenty of advocates, but most are not trained in effective ways to communicate with those who have little understanding of the system and those who focus on short-term technology changes without adequately considering the long-term business investments. Choosing to be an advocate doesn’t automatically bring the knowledge of how to effectively support and defend.

To begin, let’s make a distinction between popular computing and smart computing. Smart computing is about facilitating change while doing what’s right for a

Blue Chip got its start in the garage of founder and current managing director Brian Meredith back in 1987, even before there was an AS/400. The company was originally created to provide third-party maintenance on System/36 and System/38 gear, and over the years it expanded into the AS/400 and successor markets. About a decade ago, Blue Chip got into direct product sales, including IBM’s Power-based systems as well as X86 iron, and also into managed services. Now, it is investing heavily in the cloud, and for IBM i workloads in particular.

Blue Chip has around 200 employees in operations in

Stop the presses! (Or whatever the digital equivalent of that would be.) Nick Bilton sees the future of technology and its name is Google. OK, so Bilton may be more perceptive than prophetic, but given the direction of industry drift, his analysis appears to be spot on. Looking at the galaxy of tech giants greedily circling the sphere of 21st century opportunity, there are signs of orbital decay.

Microsoft and IBM have lost their sizzle. Like Greece they’re still cashing in on their Golden Age, but time and technology seem to be passing them by. Both Facebook and Twitter

Just as the sizzling economic growth of emerging markets was a red hot poker for the IT industry, the cooling of those economies has caused IDC to scale back its worldwide IT spending growth projection for 2014. The Asia/Pacific (including China), Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa regions are all witnessing devaluated currency, rising inflation, and bulging trade deficits, none of which bodes well for IT spending.

Add to that what IDC calls “the inevitable deceleration in the growth of smartphones and tablets,” and we have the basis for a corrected IT spending forecast that is lowered

December was cold, and so was January. And the economy in the United States is feeling the chill if the job market is any indicator. For the second month in a row, American employers in the private sector added fewer jobs than expected and the masters of the public sector across local, state, and Federal agencies took out the pink slips and handed them around.

The Department of Labor issues its monthly jobs report, which you can see here, on the first Friday of every month and the global economy reacts instantly to what numbers come out. As I

The Enterprise Computing Solutions group at Arrow Electronics turned in its financial report card for the fourth quarter ended in December, with very good revenue growth, and the company’s components business also did pretty well, too, on that sales front. But costs were on the rise and the company also booked some restructuring charges that took a bite out of profits.

In the quarter, Arrow had $6.15 billion in sales, up 13.9 percent, and net income, after an $18.2 million restructuring charge, fell 22.8 percent to $134.9 million. This once again demonstrates how tough it is to make a nickel

Workforce modernization should be on the minds of a lot more IT managers and executive level long-term strategists. We hear companies putting out the message that they need IT professionals with skills that match the newly blossoming job requirements. There are unfilled jobs waiting for the right applicant to come along.

I’m not an IT director or a human resources manager, but as an IT industry observer it seems to me existing IT staff in many of the IBM midrange shops is underused. Overworked, but underused. This is an opportune time to consider a job training program that is job

What great feats of IBM i innovation have you been party to lately? If you have a story worth sharing with the rest of the IBM i universe, you had better hurry up and submit it for your chance at glory and a COMMON/IBM Power Systems Innovation Award.

Every spring, an Innovation Award is bestowed upon one worthy IBM i shop at the COMMON Annual Meeting and Exposition event. This year, today, February 10, is the deadline for submitting your application for the 2014 COMMON conference, which is taking place the first week in May in beautiful Orlando, Florida.

The third quarter financial report from Agilysys showed pretty much as-expected results with a growth in recurring support revenue not being strong enough to combat an overall reduction in revenue. Management painted the outcome as demonstrating growth in higher-margin recurring revenue while continuing to focus on solutions and customer support to clients across the hospitality industry, but it also revised the company’s fiscal 2014 outlook to predict lower than expected annual growth.

Agilysys officials attributed the steep decline in product revenue to a decrease in “lower-margin, remarketed product sales in the third quarter of fiscal 2013 that did not repeat