• IBM Mashup Center to Offer Online Trials

  June 10, 2008 Dan Burger

  The invitations to IBM‘s Mashup Center are out, but Big Blue has yet to determine when it will allow us to come play in its Web 2.0-oriented sandbox. The trial version, hosted by IBM and available on a trial basis on an IBM Web page is supposed to be ready “within a week or two.” When that day comes, it should offer some creative opportunities for non-programmer types to learn how composite applications can be assembled and used in a collaborative work setting. Widgets and templates can be combined with drag and drop convenience to bring together databases, unstructured

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• Vision Signs Filipino Retailer to HA Contract

  June 10, 2008 Alex Woodie

  Puregold Price Club, one of the largest retail companies in the Philippines, has installed Vision Solutions‘ iTERA HA software to provide data replication and failover capabilities for its System i-based logistics application, the software company announced yesterday. Since it was established in Manila in 1998, Puregold Price Club has grown and now operates 23 stores near the Filipino capital and surrounding provinces. Supporting this growth are more than 600 employees and a robust IT system based on JDA Software‘s popular Merchandising Management System (MMS) application, which runs on a System i Model 550 at Puregold headquarters. With business

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• Zend Taps System i-PHP Guru, Pushes the i Platform

  June 10, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In its efforts to pump up the use of PHP for enterprise applications running on the i platform, Zend Technology has announced that it has hired a long-time PHP-on-i advocate, Mike Pavlak, to be part of the Zend team, helping get i shops moving toward deploying PHP for creating new applications and modernizing old ones for the Web. Zend has also hired other i-specific sales and channel managers, and has announced two new partnerships with players in the i ecosystem. Pavlak, as many of you know, was formerly the IT director at Tripp Lite, a Chicago-based maker of uninterruptible power

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• Magic Targets Rich Internet Apps, SaaS with G5

  June 9, 2008 Alex Woodie

  Magic Software recently announced G5, the codename for a new development environment due this month that promises to deliver “rich Internet applications” and an on-ramp to delivering applications via the software as a service (SaaS) method. Officials with the company say the software will build upon Magic’s eDeveloper legacy for the Web 2.0 age, while also removing the technical barriers that make it difficult for developers to target multiple deployment architectures with the same code base. Integrated development environments (IDEs) haven’t kept up with the demands for more flexibility in the deployment of applications developed with the IDEs, according to

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• The Power Systems M15 and M25 Versus Their Predecessors

  June 9, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It seems like a long time since IBM announced the Power Systems convergence and the new Power6-based Power 520 i Edition 9407-M15, 9408-M25, and 9409-M50 machines, which replace the System i 520, 515, 525, and 550 boxes, which were based on the Power5+ processors. To its credit, Big Blue made a lot of progress in late 2006 with its user-capped Solution Edition Power5+ machines, which were productized as the 515 and 525 with the Power5+ chips in early 2007. The new Power Systems offer further price/performance improvements, but just how much depends on the precise configuration you look at. As

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• Forget About Platforms, Let’s Talk About Jobs

  June 9, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As a long time watcher of the systems and server area–at least by IT journalism standards, where journos usually burn out after five to 10 years in the field–I take a keen interest in any means of ranking the different platforms of the world. In the absence of truly impartial data, I am always on the lookout for a new way to compare different platforms. For the past couple of weeks, I have been playing around with the Internet’s major search engines to rank various server platform brands, and this week I continue the series, this time looking at what

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• As I See It: Citizen CEO

  June 9, 2008 Victor Rozek

  Think of yourself as the CEO of your life. Your budget, like that of your competitors, is 8,760 hours per year. How do you vote with your time, money, and energy? What do you say “yes” to, and what do you say “no” to? Given all of your different personas (the goof-off, the responsible one, the dreamer, the provider, the visionary, the critic, the good child, etc.), which has controlling interest of the enterprise that is you? Who are the stockholders you are obliged to please? Who sits on your board of directors; and who has veto power? And, if

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• Imtech Buys Reseller Real Solutions for U.K. Expansion

  June 9, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For all the intense competition in the server and storage space, it is still a pretty good business that, despite the technical training required and tough sales environment, yields plenty of profits for many of the players who peddle IT gear. Of course, the bigger the reseller, the better, since size usually brings breadth as well as depth of coverage. And that is why Dutch IT, communications, and engineering conglomerate Imtech has decided to buy Real Solutions, an IBM systems resellers that has a large presence in the United Kingdom. Real Solutions, for you students of IT history, was

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• NOAA Predicts the 2008 Hurricane Season to Be an Active One

  June 9, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In case you haven’t noticed, the global economy is about as crazy as the world climate and the state of the Internet. That’s probably a coincidence, even if it might not feel like it. The Western economies are under pressure thanks to financial shenanigans and the price of energy while Eastern economies are exploding as they have become the manufacturing engines for the world; the Internet is a collection of tens of millions of servers, just this side of controlled chaos and doing great things for us personally as well as for our employers. But the Internet is rife with

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• Enterprise Computing Opens Students’ Eyes to i and z at FDU

  June 9, 2008 Dan Burger

  Science and technology are recognized as drivers of economic growth, and undoubtedly both will have an increasing role in the future. Certainly individuals will prosper in proportion to their scientific, technological, and engineering talents and we would expect those with computer science and information systems degrees to have excellent career opportunities. How does IBM‘s Power Systems machinery running the i platform fit into this view of the future? “I talk to people with all different types of systems, and the impression I have is that people expect the System i and the System z to hold their own or

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