• Boomi On-Demand Goes GA

  January 22, 2008 Alex Woodie

  One of the challenges of deploying software as a service (SaaS) applications is the need to integrate SaaS-based data with other applications, including applications running on in-house computers and those living on the Net. Boomi, an established developer of EDI and integration software, claims to have solved this challenge with Boomi On-Demand, which recently completed beta testing and is now generally available. Boomi introduced its On-Demand offering last year as a way to make it easier for companies to keep a handle on their data, whether it resides on their own computers or on their service providers’ servers. The

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• SunGard Unveils Restoration Services Offering

  January 22, 2008 Alex Woodie

  SunGard last week launched a new service offering designed to help companies recover their servers in the event of a disaster. With its new offering, called Restoration Services for Managed IT Services, SunGard will help companies design and test their disaster recovery plans, and then provide them with facilities, equipment, and expertise in the event that any of the companies declare a disaster. For years, SunGard Availability Services has been helping some of the nation’s largest companies ensure their capability to maintain IT and business services in the event of a disaster. In recent months, the Wayne, Pennsylvania, company has

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• Infinite Software Updates Web App

  January 22, 2008 Alex Woodie

  Infinite Software (formerly California Software) last week unveiled a new release of Infinite Web, a set of tools for moving i5/OS applications to the Web. With Infinite Web 5.0, the company now allows customers to mix and match the deployment of modernized applications across Java and .NET run-time environments. As a component of Infinite Software’s Infinite iSeries suite, Infinite Web provides a set of tools designed to help customers modernize their traditional i5/OS green-screen business applications by providing them with Web-based graphical interfaces. At the same time, the tool aims to help improve integration with other applications by employing service

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• Weak Dollar, Services, and Power6 Give IBM a Solid Fourth Quarter

  January 21, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  After pre-announcing on last Monday morning that it would have better than expected profits in its fourth quarter, giving Wall Street a helping hand as it tries to climb up the steep cliff it has tumbled off in recent weeks, IBM reported its full and official financial results for the quarter last Thursday afternoon after the market closed. This turns out to be one of the best quarters IBM has turned in during the past decade, in terms of both revenue and profit growth. The big hero for the quarter is probably the increasing prices for oil, which is driving

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• IBM Aims for Server Expansion in 2008, Including System i Reincarnation

  January 21, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For the past several years, I have ended each work year by attending a server technology conference hosted by UBS, which typically draws the top brass from the major server divisions of the tier one server makers. This year, because of the high cost of putting on the event, UBS decided to not do it. But some of the server makers did attend the Global Technology Conference in San Francisco hosted by Lehman Brothers in December. One of them was IBM, and Bill Zeitler, the senior vice president in charge of Systems and Technology Group, had some interesting things

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• Readers Riff on the 2008 System i Wish List

  January 21, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In last week’s issue of The Four Hundred, I did a stream-of-consciousness rendition of a wish list I had for the System i product line for 2008. Making my own list is fun–well, if you like banging your head against a wall, as most of us in the i5/OS and OS/400 ecosystem apparently do–but the real reason I do it is to try to solicit ideas from readers of this newsletter and publish them so one set of readers of this newsletter–the executives at IBM–can see what we are all thinking. A number of you responded to my

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• Sun Casts a $1 Billion Net to Catch MySQL

  January 21, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The 2008 IT market was looking a little boring so far this year, but server and operating system maker and software powerhouse wannabee Sun Microsystems woke everybody up early last Wednesday morning with the news that it would spend $1 billion to acquire open source database maker MySQL. This is arguably one of the smartest moves Sun has made in a decade, and probably rivals the decision it made in the mid-1990s to buy the carcasses from Thinking Machines, Kendall Square, and the Cray Sparc-based server business. That is a qualified “probably” because Sun’s early embrace of Internet technologies,

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• The Rumor Mill on IBM’s Impending Platform Announcements

  January 21, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  A year ago, when it was just becoming clear that IBM was going to take longer to get its Power6-based server platforms to market than many had expected, there were plenty of rumors going around when IBM would get its revamped System i and System p iron and their respective i5/OS V6R1 and AIX 6.1 operating systems to market. As we headed into summer, mainframe customers heard that the new z6-based machines were coming, and they held back spending, too. There’s just no question at all that IBM had planned to have the Power6 processors and their servers into the

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• Some Info on i5/OS V6R1 and V6R2 Support

  January 21, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  I am convinced that IBM is getting ready to take the wraps off i5/OS, and it is not because I have any solid information. Not yet, anyway. I am hearing a lot of different things about what IBM may and may not be doing, and when it may or may not be doing them. But I have gotten my hands on some concrete information about V6R1 that comes from IBM’s top techies, and it has some information you will find useful as you make your plans. First and foremost, on an operating system roadmap that IBM put together only a

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• A Little More Color on IBM’s Q4 2007 Server Sales

  January 21, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Whatever IBM did to stop the eight-quarter decline in sales of System i servers, my advice is to keep doing more of that. (Unless it pumped the channel full of iron to get good numbers, as vendors are sometimes tempted to do, particularly in the fourth quarter when the bonuses of their employees and partners, as well as their own, are at stake.) The Power-based server line was one of the saviors of Big Blue’s ending quarter of 2007, and for once, the System i product line was helping out instead of hurting. As we reported in the lead story

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