• Lawson Goes SaaSy with HCM

  May 29, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Lawson Software last week unveiled Human Capital Management On-Demand, a new software as a service (SaaS) offering that lowers the bar of entry to Lawson’s products and provides a more consistent pricing schedule. Lawson consistently scores high on analyst rankings of Human Capital Management (HCM), which incorporates applications such as human resources, payroll, recruiting, benefits management, and assorted self-service and portal applications. Now, with HCM On-Demand, Lawson is making it easier for organizations to gain the benefits of using HCM offerings without making the big up-front capital investment in software, hardware, facilities, and personnel. The software vendor uses a subscription-based

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• CCSS Publishes High Availability White Paper

  May 29, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Interested in learning more about System i high availability issues, including how to pick the right high availability solution and how to calculate the cost of your downtime? Then you might want to check out a new white paper that i5/OS systems management specialist CCSS has published on its Web site. CCSS’ new white paper, titled “Availability Monitoring on the IBM System i,” takes a look at high availability from several angles, including the effects of downtime on different parts of an organization, various failures that could cause downtime, and ways to calculate the financial toll that downtime can have

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• IBM Unveils Fastest-Ever IPS

  May 29, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Voice over IP (VoIP) and other bandwidth-intensive applications can clog your network pipes and compromise the effectiveness of your Intrusion Prevention System (IPS). To help prevent this dangerous scenario, IBM‘s Internet Security Systems (ISS) unit last week launched a new IPS, the Proventia Network IPS GX6116, that supports network environments running at speeds up to 15 Gbps, with full protection guaranteed for the first six Gbps of traffic. IBM’s ISS unit, which it acquired less than a year ago, makes and sells IPS and other IT security equipment and runs the X-Force research and development organization that collects

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• IBM’s First Power6 Box: A Glimpse Into System i 2008 Edition

  May 29, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As the rumors swirling around for the past few weeks suggested that IBM would, the company last week launched the Power6 processor and its first server to make use of it. IBM had been hinting rather strongly that the first machine to get the Power6 chip would not be a System i, which got the Power5 chip first in 2004, but rather a System p box. That machine gives System i shops a glimpse of a midrange/high-end server that awaits them in the future–most likely in 2008. The System p 570 machine that IBM announced last week as the first

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• Virtualization, Consolidation Drive Server Sales in Q1

  May 29, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The massive churning in the server business continued apace in the first quarter, according to market statistics released by both IDC and Gartner. While neither company ever agrees down to the second significant digit when it comes to revenue market share in the server space, the analysts at IDC and Gartner agree that the virtualization of servers is driving the sale of more expensive boxes and server consolidation is pushing lots of new iron into data centers and, presumably, lots more older iron out. According to IDC’s statistics, worldwide factory revenue for servers sold during the first quarter of

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• IBM Offers Upgrade and Trade-In Promotions to Bolster System i Sales

  May 29, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With new user-priced System i 515 and 525 boxes out the door a month and a half ago to address the entry server market and no expectation of a revamping of the System i line with the Power6 processors until early 2008–unless, of course, market conditions force IBM to change its plans–the company last week announced a number of promotions that are designed to lower the cost of buying a modern System i and get customers to spend now rather than later. The upgrade and trade-in promotion deals that IBM announced concurrently with the launch of the first Power6-based server–a

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• The X Factor: Small Is Beautiful

  May 29, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For the past five decades of the computer industry, three forces have been at work that have determined the trajectory of all hardware and software technologies. The first, and perhaps the most important, is the desire by companies and individuals to want to automate processes and store data. Without this desire, Moore’s Law–the ability to put more transistors on a chip to boost processing or memory capacity–would be meaningless. Data centers would be the size of a pack of cigarettes, and they would only cost $100. This desire to computerize processes and information that were otherwise done by people and

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• IBM Announces New HMCs for System p and System i Servers

  May 29, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As part of the launch of the System p 570 Power6-based server last week, IBM also announced three new Hardware Management Consoles, or HMCs. These devices have been necessary since the advent of the Power5 processor three years ago to control the logical partitioning and capacity on demand (for processor cores and main memory) inside System i and System p servers; mainframes have had HMCs even longer, by the way. System p 575, 590, and 595 boxes, whether they are running AIX or Linux, require an HMC, and the i5 595 box requires an HMC as well. AIX and Linux

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• Big Blue Offers Free Monitoring to Server Customers

  May 29, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Remote customer support provided via modem was one of the big innovations that IBM brought out with the AS/400 back in the summer of 1988, and the idea continues to evolve as server platforms and networking technologies change. Last week, IBM announced a free monitoring service to customers who buy its servers–that’s System i, System p, System x, System z, and BladeCenter–or its high-end DS8000 disk arrays. As long as the products are under IBM warranty or you have a maintenance agreement once the warranty has run out, you can use the Electronic Service Agent. This software is available for

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• IDC Projects Disk Capacity to Grow, But Revenues to Flatten

  May 29, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Thank heavens for the Internet, rich media content, governance, and regulatory compliance. That is what executives at the vendors of disk arrays must be saying to themselves each night as they go to sleep. The voracious appetite for disk capacity in enterprise systems has been growing at 60 percent a year for so long that people think it is a law, and if the projections made by IDC are correct, then the IT community’s appetite for disk capacity in the coming years is not going to abate. According to a recent report entitled Worldwide Disk Storage Systems 2007 – 2011

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