• Rocket Buys Zephyr For Terminal Emulation

  February 6, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Rocket Software consolidated its position in the market for terminal emulation software last week when it acquired Zephyr Development Corp., a Houston, Texas, company that developed the PASSPORT line of terminal emulation and integration solutions for accessing and modernizing applications running on z/OS, IBM i, Unix, and OpenVMS servers. It was the second IBM i-related acquisition for Rocket in a month, and sends a strong signal of support for the platform. Zephyr was a small, feisty company that delighted in taunting its larger competitors in the mature terminal emulation space and pressing customers to question the value they get

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• More Reader Feedback On Control Your Code, And HMC Stay Of Execution

  February 6, 2012 Hey, TPM

  Don’t forget to mention COBOL programmers on the iSeries still writing green screens! I always hear about the RPGers, but what about us COBOLers? Are there more out there? If you hear of anyone looking for a COBOL programmer, I’ve got 33 years experience in IT. I have about six years of experience writing RPG in the 1990s, too, but prefer COBOL. Been on the iSeries (AS/400) since it was introduced back in the 1980s. Glad to hear green screen is still alive and well elsewhere! –Mary Ah, Mary. I shoulda known better. Mea culpa. –TPM I always read

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• Rolling With The Job Market

  February 6, 2012 Dan Burger

  Got a head full of ideas, but no job or maybe the wrong job? Maybe this will help. It’s a listing of staffing priorities for 2012 compiled by the career data-mining specialists at Dice, with info based on data scooped from the brains of 1,200 tech-focused hiring managers and recruiters. Many of you IBM i and RPG propellerheads aren’t going to like this, but number one on the list of skills that lead to jobs is Java. I know . . . next to the notice of mandatory attendance at another meeting where reductions in healthcare benefits are discussed,

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• IBM Offers Zero Percent Financing On Power Systems, Storage

  February 6, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It’s a new year and a new first quarter and a new and somewhat challenging economy in North America, and therefore IBM is offering financing deals in the United States and Canada. Last week, Big Blue rolled out a zero percent financing program called Fast Start Financing that, as the name suggests and as the company has done many times in the past, offers cheap financing to customers. In this case, the deal is available for customers looking to acquire Power Systems servers (running any of the operating systems supported, including IBM i, AIX, and Linux) and on various storage

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• Big Blue Slashes DB2 Web Query Prices–Again

  February 6, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It sure does look like IBM wants you to stop using Query/400 or any one of a number of third-party query tools that run in conjunction with the DB2 for i relational database at the heart of the IBM i operating system. For the second time in just a little over two years, Big Blue has taken the mighty red pen for cost-cutting and chopped it in half with a katana and then use the sword on prices for selected features in the DB2 Web Query software development kit. Back in October 2010, IBM sliced selected DB2 Web Query

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• Does Your IBM i OS Matter? I Think So

  February 6, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Here at The Four Hundred, we search far and wide and look high and low for things that matter to your Power Systems-IBM i shop. We may wander off on a tangent or two here and there as we think about the IT market (especially in the As I See It and Mad Dog 21/21 columns, which have this wandering as their purpose), but we take pride in the fact that we always bring it on home. I don’t mean to pick. Really I don’t. But it really bothers me when IBM completely forgets about the IBM i operating

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• Big Blue’s Software Gurus Rethink Systems

  January 30, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The AS/400 Division and its affiliated Rochester Lab and manufacturing facility has brought some of the key innovations in systems to market ever created by IBM–dense DRAM, magnetoresistive disk heads and dense disk drives, 64-bit PowerPC processor, relational database technology, server virtualization hypervisors, the list goes on–and that made Big Blue a player in the systems market when they were on the cutting edge and that still make it a player today. But the reality of the situation is that Rochester is no longer a center of gravity for systems in the way it was in the past. The

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• IBM Throws The Books At Big Power7 Shops

  January 30, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If you are shopping for a big bad box to run IBM i, AIX, or Linux–or a combination of the three–then Big Blue has a deal for you on its enterprise-class Power 770, 780, and 795 servers. The deal that IBM offered to customers of System p5 590, System p5 595 machines in October 2007 and then in March 2010 on the Power 595 in the wake of the initial Power7-based servers, which came out a month earlier. In announcement letter 312-011, Big Blue has rolled out the Power Systems 2 For 1 Power 7 Processor Book promotion. If

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• Fiserv Alleges FIS Infringed On Patents For Online Payment Software

  January 30, 2012 Alex Woodie

  Fiserv this month filed a lawsuit in federal court against rival IBM i banking software provider Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) and its Metavante subsidiary over alleged violation of its patents relating to online payments. The alleged violations involve patents held by Fiserv’s subsidiaries, CheckFree and CashEdge, that describe online financial activities, such as conducting account-to-account transfers, creating electronic transaction “pick lists,” and making payments on behalf of others. Fiserv made a big investment in electronic bill and presentment technology in 2007 when it spent $4.4 billion to buy CheckFree, which at the time processed more than 75 percent of

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Angry Hurd

  January 30, 2012 Hesh Wiener

  Oracle sure has headaches. It is not selling enough software to please investors. It isn’t making its numbers in hardware, either. It is governed by a two-headed executive reporting to CEO Larry Ellison. One of the presidents, Mark Hurd, is trying to get beyond the airing of a lawyer’s demand letter that turned his private folly into public obloquy. As a result, loyal Larry Ellison is saddled with his distracting, maladroit prince when he sorely needs to be fully focused, playing at the top of his game. All this unfolded in late December, beginning on the 20th when, after the

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