• Magic Software Boosts Sales and Profits in Q2

  August 18, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Application tool and integration software provider Magic Software Enterprises continued to make progress on riding up the wave of legacy application modernization out there in the world, and reported record sales and profits in its second quarter ended June 30. Magic Software is based in Or Yehuda, Israel, but does a lot of its business in North America and Europe–particularly in OS/400, i5/OS, and i shops. So its own rise and fall is something of a barometer, loosely speaking, of what is going on out there in AS/400 land. Being a public company, as Magic Software is, allows us to

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• Kronos Says Business Is Still Growing, Profits More So

  August 18, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The one thing that happens when a company goes from being publicly held to private is that it has at least four fewer reasons to talk to the world about itself since the company doesn’t have to do the quarterly dance with Wall Street and the financial and trade press. But old habits die hard, and human resource and talent management software maker Kronos reported financial results for its fiscal 2008 third quarter, just because it can if it wants to and just to make a little noise for itself. There aren’t a lot of details, of course, because Kronos

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• Why Blade Servers Still Don’t Cut It, and How They Might

  August 11, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Sometimes, a good idea just doesn’t take off. OK, this is information technology, not philosophy, so let me rephrase that more accurately. Sometimes, ideas and habits that were once laudable have an immense inertia that prevents a new and perhaps better idea from building momentum in the market; sometimes, a standard however begrudgingly adopted by IT vendors can overcome that inertia. Such is the case with the wonderful idea of blade servers. Every couple of years, the situation with blade servers boils my blood a little bit, like a squandered opportunity does for most of us. Here we are in

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• Power Systems Memory Prices Slashed to Promote Virtualization

  August 11, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  While server makers are, generally speaking, pretty excited about server virtualization, their excitement is not just limited to the idea that the advent of sophisticated virtualization hypervisors and the efficiencies that consolidation affords compels customers to spend money on new gear when they might otherwise not spend anything at all. Server virtualization and the consolidation it allows also compels customers to buy beefier machines, ones with lots of processor, memory, and disk capacity, and I/O bandwidth. These are machines that are inherently more profitable than the little boxes sprawled all over the data center these days. Since the advent of

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• Database Modernization Still Unknown Territory

  August 11, 2008 Dan Burger

  Just because an IT manager is accustomed to flying in the face of convention doesn’t always mean there is a flight plan involved. And that’s not to say that the ranks of IT professionals are filled with high stakes gamblers, either. By and large, IT is a safe haven for the risk adverse. As an example, let’s take a look at the integrated database used by AS/400, iSeries, and System i users and compare it with what is considered a modern database. Who is ready to make the jump? The long accepted practice in the System i environment–which dates back

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• As I See It: God Bless Technology

  August 11, 2008 Victor Rozek

  Technology is a canvas painted in broad strokes. It tends to be discussed as an abstraction, serving as a one-word synopsis for the diverse exertions of scientists and engineers. Technology is a verb without a definitive object. It has become an end in itself, many steps removed from the lives of end users. While the cultural impacts of technology are readily apparent, the personal impacts are far less evident. We may approximate from sales and usage figures the number of computer owners and Internet users. We can track how many messages they send, and which Internet sites they frequent; but

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• Virtualization Adoption Skyrockets on Power Systems Iron

  August 11, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  One of the side-effects of unifying the System i and System p Power-based server lines into a single Power Systems division is the unified statistics, when cut along the lines that IBM has been using to show Power Systems revenue increases, that Big Blue is putting out show a radical improvement in the adoption rate of its virtualization hypervisor among its customer base. Some of this growth is a trick of the numbers, but a lot of it is actual adoption of virtualization by an increasing number of AIX and i shops. In conjunction with the LinuxWorld conference and expo

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• IBM Offers Application Development Tool Sandbox for i and z Shops

  August 11, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If you want to modernize your RPG or COBOL applications on System i or System z platforms and their predecessors or, in the case of the System i, its Power Systems i successor, and you have programmers who learn and type at lightning speed, then IBM has a deal for you. It’s called the Enterprise Modernization Sandbox, which you can view at www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/emsandbox/, and it is a freebie three-hour session on a hosted set of IBM’s software development tools for i and z platforms to give programmers a taste of the tools that the Rational division within IBM’s Software

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• The SMB Channel Wants to Sell SaaS and Managed Services

  August 11, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  AMI-Partners is an IT consultancy that makes a living tracking what technologies and management techniques are being deployed by small and medium businesses; think of it as a Gartner and IDC for the little guys. And according to a recent report, two areas are heating up in the SMB space–SaaS and managed services–and AMI is advising companies in the IT channel that service SMB shops start looking in this area. “Clearly services in the SMB space have become a priority for IT and telecom manufacturers,” explains Ryan Brock, vice president of AMI’s channel partners practice in New York. “And managed

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• Avnet Buys Ontrack for Asian Expansion

  August 11, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IT distributor Avnet has been battling with rival Arrow Electronics to make acquisitions to build out its business on a global scale, particularly in fast-growing sub-markets in Europe and Asia. Last week, it was Avnet’s turn to make a deal, and in this case, the Phoenix, Arizona, company acquired Ontrack Solutions, a systems integrator and reseller based in Mumbai, India. Ontrack was founded in 1992, and is one of the key distributors for IBM‘s servers, storage, services, and security and systems management software in India and adjacent countries. In terms of servers, Ontrack is a reseller of Power

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