• Corus360 Builds Power Systems Cloud In Atlanta

  May 13, 2013 Dan Burger

  Corus360, an Atlanta, Georgia-based value added reseller (VAR) with a 30,000-square-foot data center, is expanding its services with an application hosting business for companies using IBM i, AIX, and Linux apps. It calls its new, on-demand, allocation of resources venture PowerCloud360. Companies looking to reduce IT capital expenditures and expenses are the target market. Behind the PowerCloud360 name is IBM Power Systems’ proven virtualization capabilities–virtualized processors, memory, network, and storage. Of course, disaster recovery and high availability are part of the design. More than likely it will be the biggest portion of the business. And in true, cloud-like fashion,

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• IBM Adds Power7+ Iron To Virtual Loaner Program

  May 13, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If you are a business partner who can’t get access to a new Power7+ machine but you want to compile and test your code on some shiny new iron, then IBM has a slice of iron it wants you to take for free. On April 24, the developerWorks web site aimed at application developers announced that the Virtual Loaner Program, a long-running service that Big Blue set up when it decided to go cloudy for developers instead of giving them cut-priced Power Systems on which to code their apps, had been updated with Power7+ machines. IBM does not say what

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• Salesforce.com Was The Top CRM Software Peddler In 2012

  May 13, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Call it a sign of the times. According to the latest rankings available from IT market researcher Gartner, online and SaaSy software supplier Salesforce.com has blown by SAP to become the top supplier of customer relationship software in the world. The rankings from Gartner are based financial figures for the full 2012 year, and have Salesforce.com raking in $2.53 billion for its online, subscription-based CRM wares. That is an increase of 26 percent over the revenues that the company generated in 2011. Salesforce.com was by no means the only fast-growing CRM software supplier, so don’t get the wrong idea.

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• Arrow Boosts Sales And Profits For Enterprise Computing In Q1

  May 13, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Various IT suppliers have had a tough time in various parts of their businesses as 2013 has gotten rolling, but master electronics and IT distributor Arrow Electronics seems to be having an easier time than some of the upstream vendors whose products it peddles in the data center. In the first quarter ended in March, Arrow said that its overall sales contracted by 1 percent to $4.85 billion, mainly by a reduction in its electronic components business, which fell by 5 percent to $3.19 billion. Keeping that revenue coming in selling components came at a cost, however, and operating earnings

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• IT Hiring Growth Slows For Third Month In A Row

  May 13, 2013 Jenny Thomas

  We are not even to summer yet and the hopeful prognostications of 2013 being the year of the rebound in the IT jobs market is melting away faster than the winter snow. The good folks at Janco Associates, who keep a close eye on IT industry trends, are reporting slow growth in IT hiring for the third month in a row. It is human nature to start a new year with an optimistic outlook for the coming months, anticipating happy and prosperous times ahead. At the beginning of 2013 we were reporting on a IT job explosion in North

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• As I See It: Abiding Solitude

  May 13, 2013 Victor Rozek

  Arguably the most memorable part of the movie Cast Away is watching Tom Hanks slowly going mad from an excess of solitude, eventually befriending a Wilson volleyball. Conversations and arguments ensue, and even though they’re one-sided, so deep is Tom’s character’s longing for a connection that an inanimate object is preferable to the terror of prolonged aloneness. If only Tom had texting. Since the advent of the Internet, the business of assuaging loneliness has reached a feverish pitch. Self-help books and bars have been displaced by social media and pornography. And if connection is the new frontier, there are few

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• Knee Deep In Database Modernization

  May 13, 2013 Dan Burger

  Twenty years ago, the DB2/400 database from IBM was not being asked to do the things that the DB2 for i database for the IBM i operating system is being asked to do today. Database limitations sometimes sneak up on us. Even though the handwriting has been on the wall for some time, there has to be a reason to stop and read it. Jim Ritchhart read it. He knows database modernization because he is living it. His story of database modernization is a good one. Ritchhart works for Uline, a shipping supplies and packaging materials manufacturer with headquarters near

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• Dances With Elephants

  May 13, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If you are a typical IBM i shop, you have spent decades turning the transactional data in your application stack into information that business managers and other workers within the company can not only use to keep the money rolling in and the products rolling out, but to do a better job of managing those two processes. And you are probably pretty proud of the fact that it takes relatively modest resources to accomplish this, and you are no doubt wondering what all of this yammering about so-called “big data” is all about. Well, the first thing big data is

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• CYBRA Debuts Locking RFID Seals

  May 7, 2013 Alex Woodie

  CYBRA last week unveiled Lock & EnCode, a new line of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags that can be locked. CYBRA sees the new padlock-like devices being used to add security for high-value items, and also to provide a tamper-evident seal. Lock & EnCode devices serve two functions. First, they bring the user traditional RFID item-tracking functionality. Secondly, they serve as a small padlock (breaking strength: about 29 foot-pounds of force) to secure items in transit. The devices feature a plastic shell and a metal hasp. Once the lock has been set, the only way to open it is to

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• Manufacturer Taps VAULT400 for Cloud Backup

  May 7, 2013 Alex Woodie

  ES Robbins, an Alabama plastics manufacturer, is now protecting its IBM i-based ERP system using VAULT400, the cloud-based backup and recovery service run by United Computer Group. Based in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, ES Robbins is a specialized manufacturer of extruded polymer products that employs 150 people. The company’s five divisions make a variety of products for different industries, including floor mats, desk pads, bulk roll stripping, and fencing used in horse facilities. The company recently bolstered its own internal disaster recovery (DR) scheme by subscribing to VAULT400, a backup and recovery service that utilizes EVault‘s native IBM

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