• IBM Pushes Out Power, Mainframe Microcode Lockdown To 2014

  July 22, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It looks like IBM is getting pushback from customers and partners who are not happy about an announcement it made earlier this year to lock down access to licensed internal code for System z mainframes, Power Systems, and various storage arrays based on Power7 machinery. As The Four Hundred reported back in February, in announcement letter 113-027, IBM said that it was tweaking the licensing of the machine code, often called licensed internal code or microcode, for selected high-end servers based on Power and System z processors. IBM has revised the terms and conditions to machine code on these

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• Sirius Considers Expanding Its Power Cloud Capacity

  July 22, 2013 Dan Burger

  Sirius Computer Solutions launched its Power Cloud just about a year ago. It created two cloud environments specifically for small to midsize IBM midrange shops. Those two clouds are three-quarters full now, says Jay Johnson, director of managed services for Sirius, and the company is evaluating an investment in more cloud capacity. The existing multi-tenant clouds are built on Power 720 boxes. The next configuration may include a PureFlex system. Although 90 percent of the Power Cloud workload is IBM i-based and the growth trajectory is i-based, Johnson says there are customers interested in the capability to include AIX and

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• PureSystems Sales Break 6,000, And IBM Names New GM

  July 22, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Two weeks ago, we told you that Andy Monshaw, the long-time head of IBM‘s Storage Systems Division and more recently the general manager of the PureSystems modular systems business, had left Big Blue. Due to the Independence Day holiday in the United States, IBM was unable to confirm Monshaw’s departure, but last week Big Blue said that Monshaw had indeed left the company and that a new executive had been tapped to replace him. The new general manager of the PureSystems product line is Andrew Sotiropoulos, who has been around many IBM divisions and groups over the years and

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• As I See It: Searching for the Perfect Question

  July 22, 2013 Victor Rozek

  Lying to get a job used to be a lot easier. There was a time when a fluffed-up resume was enough to get you an interview. A proper display of earnestness, a dash of personal charm, and a retelling of your exaggerated accomplishments would pretty much guarantee that you could keep living indoors. Back then, resume claims were seldom checked, and what checking occurred was not very useful. By law, companies could only verify employment, and unless you could cajole someone into speaking off the record, you learned nothing illuminating about the applicant. At the end of the day, hiring

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• RPG Teams Picking Up Mobile Development Skills

  July 22, 2013 Dan Burger

  Finding mobile development skills on an RPG development team is sort of like finding a homemade lemonade stand on a hot summer day in Cleveland. They’re out there. They’re a welcome relief. But they are rare. Not as rare as they used to be, however. And the numbers are growing quite nicely. I have not seen any mobile developer guesstimates for RPGers, but the mobile projects keep multiplying and there is little reason to believe the projects won’t increase in quantity and quality for years to come. How are IBM midrange shops handling this and how will they handle it

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• IBM’s Systems Biz Returns To Profitability In Q2

  July 22, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue had a tough first quarter, but things got a little bit better in the second three months of 2013 and the company’s top brass are feeling pretty good about the prospects for business in the second half of this year. This is the picture that IBM is painting despite some rough currency fluctuations that do not play in its favor and continuing difficulties in the RISC/Unix and X86 server segments. And there is tough competition in the storage business, too. In the quarter ended in June, IBM once again did not grow its revenues and once again focused,

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• Liaison Grows EDI VAN Services Business, Thanks to VAN Consolidator

  July 16, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Liaison Technologies helps organizations move and secure data with a range of tools and services. What you may not know is that Liaison has become the fourth largest provider of traditional EDI VAN services in the country. Liaison says that its partnership with NewEDI is responsible for much of the growth. NewEDI is a VAN services consolidator that buys excess VAN capacity from tier-one service providers. It then resells the capacity to smaller enterprises with lower EDI volumes, thereby enabling them to get top-tier EDI service levels at a discount of up to 50 percent, the company says. Some companies

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• Informatica Embeds PowerCenter into Zettaset’s Hadoop Software

  July 16, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Informatica has entered into an OEM agreement with Zettaset to provide its PowerCenter software with Zettaset’s Hadoop cluster management software. As part of the deal, Informatica’s PowerCenter Big Data Edition will be embedded into Zettaset’s Orchestrator Hadoop cluster management solution, which is designed to accelerate and simplify the Hadoop installation process, and provide on-going management and security capabilities. Getting data into and out of the Zettaset-managed Hadoop implementations will be easier with PowerCenter Big Data Edition managing the movements. PowerCenter is Informatica’s flagship data integration tool, and it supports a range of data sources, including IBM i and DB2/400. Informatica

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• ERP Vendors Delivering Better Value, Nucleus Says

  July 16, 2013 Alex Woodie

  The era of the slow, apathetic ERP software vendor that peddles monolithic products that are difficult to upgrade may be coming to an end, according to a recent report from Nucleus Research, which finds ERP vendors are increasingly responding to user demands for more intuitive UIs and integrated mobile and analytic capabilities. In its ERP Technology Value Matrix for the first half of 2013, Nucleus detected a change taking place in the ERP market. Driven by customer demands to “break the re-implementation cycle” and shift to a more “incremental, value-building upgrade cycle,” the Boston, Massachusetts, firm says that ERP

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• Wayne Madden Hooks Up with iFD to Sell TEMBO Database Tools

  July 16, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Wayne Madden, the longtime publisher of Penton’s IBM i publications, will be working with inFORM Decisions to help it market and sell TEMBO Technology Lab‘s DDS-to-SQL database modernization tools for DB2/400, the Southern California company announced last week. Madden left Penton earlier this year after 23 years with Penton and Duke Communications, the News/400 publisher that Penton bought in 2000. In March, he formed a consulting company, called Madden Business Development. Madden will work with iFD through his consulting company to help sell TEMBO’s AO Foundation and other tools. TEMBO signed iFD as its master distributor for the

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