• Some Thoughts on i5 Spending Patterns

  May 14, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Two weeks ago at the COMMON midrange user group meeting in Anaheim, California, Mark Shearer, the general manager of IBM‘s System i product line, divulged some internal data that the company has developed concerning spending patterns at i5 shops. I have been mulling this data, and I wanted to share some thoughts about it. As I explained in last week’s issue, Shearer and his marketing team are taking what they believe is a practical approach to i5 sales: They are going to start focusing more on IBM’s share of total revenues at i5/OS and OS/400 accounts and less

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• IBM Sees Green in Going Green in Data Centers

  May 14, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In New York City last Thursday, when the weather was just starting to get a little muggy but the air conditioning was cranking so high in the Helen Mills Theater that you could just about hang sides of beef on the stage, IBM announced a new initiative, dubbed Project Big Green, under which it will sell technology and services to help the world’s data centers consume less power as they support expanding IT workloads. While IBM as well as other server and storage array makers have been conscious of power and cooling issues surrounding IT gear since there were data

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• Children’s Foundation Blossoms from Sirius Computer

  May 14, 2007 Dan Burger

  It’s a great thing when someone gives back to the community. Often these types of stories are under the radar screen. What we more often hear about are the layoffs, the outsourcing, and the closed factories. We should be outraged by those things, but we can also take time to celebrate those who make a difference and are a positive influence in their communities. What follows here is a story that is something to feel good about, and it is intimately linked to the midrange community. The name Harvey Najim may not be familiar to you. The company he was

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• More Reader Feedback on User-Based System i Pricing

  May 14, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The i5/OS and OS/400 community is still digesting the user-based pricing that IBM announced with the new i5 515 and 525 servers a month ago. I have received some interesting feedback in the wake of the announcement, which we published a few weeks ago, and it is still coming in. If you have any thoughts you want to share, hit the Contact button on the top of this page and speak your mind. Here is another interesting comment from a reader: On April 16, you opined, “Cheap lease rates cannot make up for the fact that a configured machine at

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• IBM Readies Project Kobe to Speed SAP Deployments on System i

  May 14, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue, which has been trying to make the i5/OS and OS/400 platform attractive for end users who choose ERP systems from SAP, is cooking up a new set of tools and practices to help get mySAP ERP suites up on the i5 box faster and, presumably, with less cost. According to Mark Shearer, general manager of IBM‘s System i product line, one of the bright spots for System i5 sales in Europe has been for companies installing or upgrading SAP platforms. “System i is doing well with new SAP placements,” he said when I talked to him

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• Java Finally Open Sourced Completely–Almost

  May 14, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Sun Microsystems hosted its annual JavaOne conference last week, and the top software brass at the company, who are on a tear to open source all of the software developed by Sun to catch the open source wave and, presumably, to blow by proprietary software architectures, got most of the final bits of the Java platform out as open source software at the event. As Sun said it would last November, Java has been open sourced under the GNU GPL v2 license, which is not the v3 license that the Free Software Foundation‘s founder, Richard Stallman, is trying

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• Vision Solutions Extends Service Certification, Joins ISV Advantage Initiative

  May 14, 2007 Dan Burger

  Buyers of enterprise software make some difficult choices based on product comparisons. A lot is riding on the product purchased today and the future development of that product. The same can be said about the service side of a purchasing decision. Product assurances generally are easier to test and verify than promises of service. As you may or may not know, technology companies can obtain certification for the service they provide. It requires auditing and it quantifies the effectiveness of customer service and support based on performance standards and industry best practices. For the third consecutive year, Vision Solutions has

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• TomorrowNow Says Biz is Booming, Opens Mexico Office

  May 14, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  While it may be at the center of a lawsuit between database and ERP software supplier Oracle and its own parent company, SAP, over the alleged theft of proprietary information concerning the support of Oracle’s ERP suites, TomorrowNow says that the business of providing third-party support for Oracle’s software is booming. Specifically, TomorrowNow, which provides support for J.D. Edwards, Siebel, PeopleSoft applications from Oracle and Baan applications from Infor, said that business has doubled in the first quarter of 2007. While the company did not provide precise revenue figures, it did say that it signed 76 new deals

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• You Know You Have Been in the AS/400 Market Too Long When

  May 14, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We all get too much email these days, and as the editor in chief of an online publishing company whose email was plastered all over the Universe–well, Google’s cache, anyway–I get so much spam that my filter can’t handle it all. A lot of it still gets through. I knew I was in the i5/OS and OS/400 market too long when I saw the following email title. . . . Say ‘YES’ to perfect s3x! . . . and I immediately thought, “Who is trying to sell me an AS/400?” Seriously.                      Post this story to del.icio.us                Post this story

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• Aldon Acquired by Marlin Equity Partners

  May 14, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Another private equity firm has swooped into the i5/OS and OS/400 market and snapped up a big player in the business. Last week, application lifecycle management software maker Aldon, announced that Marlin Equity Partners, a private equity firm based outside of Los Angeles in El Segundo, California, had acquired it. Since Aldon is privately held, the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Marlin Equity was founded in 2005 by a group of people who used to work for another investment firm called Gores Technology Group. Marlin Equity’s founder, David McGovern, was a managing director at

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