• Qlik Technologies to Take Itself Public

  April 12, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Here’s something you don’t see every day in the tech industry, and you certainly don’t see very often in any company affiliated with the IBM midrange: one of them going public. Qlik Technologies, which peddles Windows-based business intelligence that interfaces with AS/400 and i systems, has been growing like crazy in recent years and is ready to get some cash from Wall Street to take it up to the next level. The company filed its S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to kick off the process, which you can read here. The Swedish company moved

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• IBM Holds i 6.1 Prices Steady, Slashes Application Server Fees

  April 5, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It has been three and a half years since IBM started to dabble with user-based pricing on OS/400 V5R3 and almost three years to the day since Big Blue decided–and thank heavens–to institute modest licensing fees and user-based pricing for the i5/OS V5R4 operating system. With the launch of the Power7-based machines in February, that was the perfect time to make any changes to packaging and pricing for the i For Business platform. The Power 750, 770, and 780 machines launched in February run i 6.1.1, and there was no mention of any pricing for the software stack in the

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• The Power7 Chip Gets Some Stiff X64 Competition

  April 5, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Three quarters of the X64 assault on the midrange server market have been deployed into the field, with last week’s launching of Intel‘s eight-core “Nehalem-EX” Xeon 7500s and Advanced Micro Devices‘s 12-core “Magny-Cours” Opteron 6100s. Three weeks ago, Intel put the six-core “Westmere-EP” Xeon 5600s out, and that only leaves the six-core “Lisbon” Opteron 4100s left to enter the price war battlefield sometime in the second quarter of this year. As the X64 chip makers and their OEM server partners start firing away at each other to compete for server deals in this still rickety economy, it is

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• Data Warehouse Mistakes Begin with i Avoidance

  April 5, 2010 Dan Burger

  If you ask Greg Veal what platform is best for creating a data warehouse, he’ll tell you it’s whatever platform you are using for your operational data. For readers of The Four Hundred, that platform is the IBM AS/400, which is officially referred to as the Power System running IBM i these days. Veal is intimately familiar with the IBM i. His experience dates back to the System/32, but his ideas are thoroughly modern. From the viewpoint of a consultant who specializes in data warehousing projects and works on those that are big enough to warrant the hiring of

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• Mad Dog 21/21: When Price/Performance Outruns Elasticity

  April 5, 2010 Hesh Wiener

  Since its inception, the computer business has given customers better value year after year. Customers have responded by buying computers even faster than price/performance has improved. Give more, get more is a nice idea, but in fact the story is not quite that simple. Computing is a harsh competitive environment, ruthlessly Darwinian. The industry has survived many ups and downs, but the same cannot be said of its vendors or architectures. IBM may find that its server business has survived the recession only to be mortally threatened by economic recovery. IBM has announced a range of Power7 servers for the

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• Rimini Street Counter Sues Oracle

  April 5, 2010 Alex Woodie

  Rimini Street last week announced it has filed a counter claim against Oracle concerning Rimini’s third-party maintenance business for Oracle’s ERP and CRM applications, including many JD Edwards customers. Rimini’s lawsuit, which comes two months after Oracle sued Rimini for allegedly stealing protected support information and application code, alleges Oracle’s lawsuit is “baseless” and that the software giant has engaged in illegal and anti-competitive business tactics for the last five years. Rimini says it filed the lawsuit to “vehemently deny” the “false and malicious allegations” Oracle made against Rimini in the January lawsuit, which you can read more about here

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• Reader Feedback on Madoff’s RPG Coders Indicted in Ponzi Scam

  April 5, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Finally RPG is back! After all these years of being relegated to boring OLTP programs, RPG and the AS/400 rock! Now, when I send resumes, I include all the articles regarding Madoff and the 400, underscoring the creative use of RPG in the scheme. I have had more offers in the last year than the last 20 years combined! HA! All you sniveling little Java, VB, PHP, and .NET programmers–who’s laughing now! –TS “And this probably makes O’Hara and Perez the two highest paid RPG programmers in history.” Is it wrong to take perverse pride in this? I’m still laughing.

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• iManifest Regroups, Plans to Meet at COMMON

  April 5, 2010 Dan Burger

  IBM i For Business enthusiasts led by Frank Soltis, Jeff Olen, Mike Pavlak, and nine software vendors are hopeful the iManifest U.S. project can still take flight. During a conference call last week, members decided to gather at the COMMON conference in Orlando next month to reinvigorate the program, which is designed to promote the i operating system as a thoroughly modern, extremely capable, and smarter alternative for running business applications. Since taking shape in July 2009, iManifest has managed to gain only limited corporate support from the independent software vendors that are crucial to the organizations goals. The vendors

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• IBM Promotion Cuts PowerVM Hypervisor Upgrade Fees

  April 5, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If you are thinking about upgrading the capability of the PowerVM hypervisor on your Power Systems box, IBM wants you to think a little bit faster and upgrade that key systems software now rather than waiting. To that end, the company announced a special promotion last week in announcement letter 310-150 whereby it is giving customers who upgrade from whatever level of PowerVM they have to the next high level up a 15 or 20 percent discount off the upgrade fees. Specifically, the deal covers upgrades from PowerVM Express Edition (5765-PVX) to PowerVM Standard Edition (5765-PVS) or to PowerVM Enterprise

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• Oracle Squeaks Out Growth, Promises Revenues from Sun

  April 5, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As the second-largest provider of application software in the world and now a server maker with aspirations of selling integrated systems, Oracle is now, by definition, a direct competitor to the AS/400 and its progeny. And how well or poorly it does, financially as well as technically, matters to i For Business shops. Because for a lot of the larger i shops that account for the bulk of the platform’s revenues these days, the next stop if they don’t continue to invest in IBM gear is a move to an Oracle platform. While The Four Hundred was on hiatus, Oracle

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