• PHP-Based Mantis Help Desk Application Coming Soon to the System i

  April 9, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The word on the street is that a commercially supported version of Mantis Help Desk, an open source PHP application that automates some of the tasks that tech support help desks have to do as they deal with end user issues, will soon be delivered on the System i5 platform. The Mantis Help Desk project was created by Bill Van Pelt in 2002 and is distributed under the GNU GPL open source license. Basically, Mantis allows end users to email the tech support team to explain their problem and have that email automatically generate a trouble ticket. You don’t

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• Zend Issues a PHP Innovation Challenge to i5/OS and OS/400 Shops

  April 9, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Zend Technology, the company behind the open source PHP language, has issued a challenge to OS/400 V5R3 and i5/OS V5R4 shops. The contest that Zend has cooked up will pit OS/400 and i5/OS shops using PHP on the iSeries and System i5 platform against each other to show who can innovate best using PHP. The challenge is only open until April 13 (yes, that’s a Friday, if you are superstitious), so you have better get coding fast and then register your application at the Zend site. IBM and Zend will together judge the submitted PHP applications. The PHP applications

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• Complacency Will Get You Killed, Security Researcher Says

  April 9, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Think you’ve surrounded yourself with enough security to prevent getting hacked? Think again. Good security practices require you to assume you will be hacked, and places the onus on how you react after the fact, according to a new report written by Mike Rothman, an independent security expert, who cheerfully titled it “The 10 Darkest Truths About Information Security.” Rothman’s paper, which was distributed by the security software firm McAfee, is a chilling reminder that, most of the time, your security provisions will not stand up to hackers, who are out there gunning for people like you and organizations

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• Hello, New York? Buy IBM

  April 9, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  While the end of the calendar year is often when we look back and examine what we have done in the prior 12 months and even further back through the years, spring is actually a time for renewal. It is when the sap starts to run, when the juices get flowing, when the earth warms, and the sun can reach your bones again to warm you. It is perhaps fitting, then, after a warm spell here in New York followed by a cold snap just after Passover and just before Easter that I ponder the future of IBM. International

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• Security Still an Issue in 2007 for System i5 Shops

  April 9, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If you need an example of why having all the great security features in the world doesn’t make your computer systems safe, look no further than TJX, the parent company behind the TJ Maxx and Marshalls department stores. Last week, the publicly traded company was horrified to have to announce that a hacker had broken into its systems and had stolen at least 47.5 million–and possibly more–credit card and debit card numbers used by its customers. If you are an OS/400 or i5/OS snob and you are laughing right now, and if you think the legendary security of the

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• A Trained IT Staff Is A Happy and Competitive One

  April 9, 2007 Hey, Brian

  I know that there have been many new and exciting capabilities added to the iSeries and System i platform, especially over the last five years. But I am at a loss to really know what they are in detail or how to use them. Along with the things IBM puts in the System i, there have been many other advances in technology from networking to e-commerce. Yet our management team does not find it worthwhile to encourage, authorize, and fund any of our team to attend any form of off-site professional or technical education. Are they just bad managers? With

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• As I See It: The Legacy

  April 9, 2007 Victor Rozek

  An accomplished man, perhaps a great one, died recently. Certainly he was a man who exerted great influence on the computing industry and the people in it. He had one of those rare minds whose contributions helped shape the future, in his case by domesticating what was previously a primitive collection of magnetic drums, cathode-ray tubes, tape units, and card readers. By putting the power of a wizardly but cumbersome and elitist device into the hands of the many, he literally accelerated human progress. Yet most people don’t know his name. As a boy, his destiny was far from evident.

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• Is the Adoption Rate of Server Virtualization Technology Over Estimated?

  April 9, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  According to a new report issued by The Strategic Counsel, a consultancy based in Toronto, and commissioned by systems software maker CA, the adoption rate of server virtualization technologies might not be as high as many surveys seem to indicate. It all depends on how you ask the question. The consensus out there in the server industry is that somewhere around 5 percent and well south of 10 percent of the servers that are sold each day have virtualization technology in one of its myriad forms sold along with that box. This is not a very high penetration

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• ERP Vendors CMS Software and XKO Software to Merge

  April 9, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Consolidation is not just happening at bigger software companies. It’s also happening, perhaps under the radar, at smaller software firms. For example, last week, two mid-tier ERP software providers, CMS Software and XKO Software were merged together, and like so many other deals done in the IT industry of late, the deal was financed with private equity capital. XKO’s software operations were acquired by Marlin Equity Partners, a private equity firm based in Los Angeles for an estimated $28 million back in October 2006. XKO was publicly traded in the United Kingdom, where it is located, on the AIM

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• Goldman Sachs Says IT Spending Will Soften a Bit in 2007

  April 9, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The analysts at Wall Street brokerage house Goldman Sachs take the pulse on IT spending from time to time, and according to a report published last week, the consensus of the analysts sifting through the survey data that Goldman Sachs puts together remains what it was late last year: IT spending will see a modest deceleration in 2007. Ironically, in the latest survey, the two vendors who are seeing market share slippages on some fronts in the data center–IBM and Dell–are cited as being projected to get a larger slice of the pie by the IT shops that

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