• Majority of IT Managers Planning for Windows Server 2008, Survey Says

  February 25, 2008 Alex Woodie

  A survey conducted for Internet computer retailer CDW found that 63 percent of IT decision makers are planning to implement Windows Server 2008, a good indicator for Microsoft and its new operating system. CDW paid a company called Walker Information to conduct the first Windows Server 2008 Tracking Poll, along with the third Windows Vista Tracking Poll, during the first week of November. The group asked 772 IT decision makers a variety of questions about their views on the two operating systems, which corresponds with a statistical error rate of 3.5 percent. The survey found that 45 percent of IT

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• IBM’s Battle Plan for i5/OS Blade Servers

  February 18, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Putting together a blade server strategy that will appeal to the i5/OS and OS/400 ecosystem is not as simple as getting a blade server into the field and making OS/400 and i5/OS run on a Power blade. If it were–and I will remind everyone that this is how Windows and Linux got blades, and eventually Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX, too–then you would expect that OS/400 would have been on a blade server many years ago and the blade form factor would account for roughly 10 percent of revenues among i5/OS shops today, as it does for the server market at

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• Sundry i5/OS V6R1 and System i Enhancements

  February 18, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Our coverage of the forthcoming i5/OS V6R1 operating system continues this week with a hodge-podge of smaller enhancements and features that were rolled up into the January 29 announcements. IBM has made a bunch of tweaks to DB2 for i5/OS, logical partitioning, performance measurement, peripheral support, and other areas that will probably not individually compel customers to upgrade, but add their collective weight to the stack of new features and it could break the camel’s checkbook open to do some spending in 2008. I know we all mostly still call the integrated relational database inside OS/400 and i5/OS DB2/400, but

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• IT Salary Increases Are Anemic in 2007, Says Dice Survey

  February 18, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Dice, which is a Web site devoted to helping engineers and other technology experts get a job, recently put out its report casing how well or poorly professionals in the IT sector did in terms of salary and raises during 2007. And the short answer seems to be that, on average, pay raises were not anywhere near the increases that programmers and managers saw in 2006. That doesn’t mean that IT personnel are not in high demand, but that companies are being a bit stingy with the cash. Dice surveyed more than 19,000 IT professionals to create the raw

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Recovering Lost Prophets

  February 18, 2008 Hesh Wiener

  If you ask computer professionals who they thought were the leaders in data storage, chances are you’ll hear names like IBM, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, Network Appliances, and Hitachi. If you asked these storage companies, you might get a different list that included some outfits that were largely unknown in the end user world. But end users probably don’t have to worry that they will miss out on some important new vendors. The Storage Establishment is buying up many of the emerging suppliers. This high-profile interest in the new crop of vendors makes all the contenders a

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• The PHP Community Starts the PHP 4 Sunset, Gears Up for PHP 6

  February 18, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The community behind the PHP scripting language that controls much of the Web application infrastructure out there on the Internet and on corporate networks has been evolving for a number of years. And now PHP 4, the language that put Zend Technologies on the map and was replaced two years ago by PHP 5, is being sunsetted by the PHP community. PHP 5.2 is the products customers need to be using as they ready for PHP 5.3 this year and PHP 6 next year. PHP 5 was a pretty bold upgrade, with object oriented programming and Web services built in,

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• Net Neutrality Comes Around on the Ferris Wheel Again

  February 18, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If at first, second, third, or fourth you don’t succeed, try, try again. Representative Ed Markey, the Democratic Congressman who hails from the 7th District of Massachusetts tech corridor around Boston, has introduced yet another bill that seeks to give some clarity about how traffic will be shaped–or not shaped–by the telecommunications companies and services providers that are the backbone of the Internet. In a bill called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008 (HR5353), Markey and co-sponsor Republican Congressman Chip Pickering of the Third District of Mississippi, propose adding a new section to the Communications Act of 1934, which

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• Consumer Technologies Help Smaller Business, Yankee Finds

  February 18, 2008 Alex Woodie

  Ever since IBM introduced the first personal computers almost 30 years ago, the consumer has been driving the development of computing technologies. This trend has been especially evident among the smaller businesses that adopted PCs and PC servers to automate their businesses, but it’s also had an impact on corporations that buy big honking servers. But a new study by the Yankee Group aims to shed some light on the new class of consumer technologies, and how they help drive employee productivity at small and mid size businesses. According to the Yankee Group, SMB technologies like blogs, wikis, smart phones,

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• IBS Has Strong Software License and System i Sales in Q4

  February 18, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Swedish ERP application software maker International Business Systems is one of the largest remaining independent software companies that has not been snapped up by a larger player. The company closed out the final quarter of 2007 with strong software license sales and System i hardware sales, but services sales were down a bit, which impacted top line sales and profits in the quarter. And, perhaps most significantly, restructuring moves taken in 2006 and 2007 have yet to yield their full intended effects on the bottom line. Sweden is still using its own currency, the krona, which is abbreviated SEK, so

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• Lawson Partnership Expands Food Industry Apps to Livestock Management

  February 18, 2008 Dan Burger

  Specialized application software and rock-solid reliability was what made the IBM AS/400 a legendary server for so many mid-sized companies around the world. Companies like Lawson Software played a big role in the successes through the years, with ERP applications that were well-suited for specific niches. Food and beverage is one. That industry has seen major operational changes such as mandated regulations in the food safety area and increasingly complex supply chain relationships involving large retail chain stores. It is also affected by fluctuating demand on a local, regional, and global scale. For more than 25 years, Lawson’s products have

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