• IT Staffing Will Be Stable for Q1, Projects Robert Half

  December 8, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There is a lot of bad economic news out there, and it is easy to despair in it sometimes. But, there is some good news if you are on the IT staff here in the United States. According to Robert Half Technology‘s latest survey, which asks CIOs and IT managers about their staffing plans for the first quarter of 2009, the vast majority of companies are planning to keep the staff they have, with only a slightly larger number of shops saying they would be making layoffs compared to a year ago. RHT is an IT headhunter and employment

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• JDA and i2 Call the Whole Thing Off

  December 8, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Only a little over a month ago, retail and supply chain management software maker JDA Software was pretty proud of the fact that its business managed to grow in the third quarter, hitting record profit and sales levels, and was looking ahead to boosting its business through its impending $346 million acquisition of i2 Technologies. What a difference an economic meltdown makes in a company’s life. i2 announced last week that it had terminated the acquisition agreement with JDA because the latter company was finding it difficult to raise the $450 million in cash it wanted to get from

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• IBM Adds 1 TB Disk to the BladeCenter S Chassis

  December 8, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Sometimes, like when you are supporting online transaction processing, you need lots of little, fast disk drives with lots of arms chasing random bits of data spread across those drives. Sometimes, when you are storing big wonking media files, you want a single, fat disk, and the rotational speed is not nearly as important as the raw, cheap capacity. The latter reason is why IBM has put a new 1 TB drive in its BladeCenter S blade server chassis for small businesses. The disk, which goes by the product number 42D0547, isn’t fast, spinning at 7.2K RPM as it does

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• Slate of Candidates Put Forth for the COMMON Board

  December 8, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  COMMON, formerly the AS/400 and successor user group and now billing itself as a Power Systems user group, is getting ready to elect a new board of directors. As November was coming to a close, the user group announced a slate of candidates for the COMMON board, with five candidates chasing three open positions on the board. COMMON members will get to vote on the candidates between March 30, 2009, and April 28, 2009; people will also be able to vote on site at the beginning of the annual COMMON meeting, which is being hosted in Reno, Nevada, from

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• Former IBM Chairman Argues for Radical Education Reform

  December 8, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Having long since turned in the reins at IBM and presumably keeping himself plenty busy as chairman of private equity player Carlyle Group, Louis Gerstner still has time to think and lecture about the state of the educational system in America. And last week, in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, Gerstner did just that. If you have access to the WSJ, you can read Gerstner’s prescription for what amounts to the nationalization of our schools at this link. Gerstner said that he had “realized rather glumly” that he had personally been advocating for

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• How Big Blue Sees Small You

  December 1, 2008 Hesh Wiener

  In September, IBM published its third biennial study of chief executive officer outlooks and attitudes. This study paid particular attention to the midmarket; companies with fewer than 1,000 employees and prime targets for the i platform. IBM found that midmarket CEOs have similar concerns and yearnings as their counterparts in larger organizations, but they expect greater change and often feel an even stronger urge to seek new opportunities. These attitudes are part of a growing trend among organizations of all sizes to envision a future with wide horizons, but this year’s study might have defined a zenith of optimism. The

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• Smart Business Boxes Launch in India, Not the U.S.

  December 1, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Since 2000, the letter “i” in the IBM midrange has stood for “integration,” the key attribute, according to Big Blue, of its AS/400 and successor platforms. But in the modern IBM, the i stands for a lot of things, including international and, lately, India. And considering that the top brass have a love affair of sorts with India, it doesn’t really come as a surprise that the company is launching its “Blue Business” Smart Cube platform in that country first rather than here in the United States. IBM’s public relations machine didn’t want any of us in North America or

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• IBM Hitches Business Continuity Horse to Managed Backup and Recovery Wagon

  December 1, 2008 Dan Burger

  The dependence of business on information technology has never been stronger. Planning and investment in one requires the same focus on the other. For some, that link between business and IT may feel a lot like handcuffs. Building a business demands the full focus of some organizations, and although IT may be recognized for providing competitive advantages, it can be a distraction that upper management prefers to turn over to someone else. IBM is happy to help. Getting the full benefit of IT resources is sometimes better left to others. Business continuity, which includes such things as backup and recovery,

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• As I See It: The Difference Maker

  December 1, 2008 Victor Rozek

  It is difficult to find the silver lining in the daily litany of financial disasters and desperate, ineffective bailouts. Somber pronouncements of impending help notwithstanding, the economy has been crippled, and the greed of the few will impose suffering on the many. If, however, there is a ray of hope in which the IT community is entitled to bathe, it is the fact that IT professionals are–generally speaking–intelligent. Don’t for a moment discount the economic value of intelligence (especially when coupled with honesty). Increasingly, it is a virtue in short supply. Perhaps the most significant division in the country–more serious

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• Zend Framework 1.7 Includes DB2/400 Adapter

  December 1, 2008 Alex Woodie

  Zend Technologies, the commercial entity behind the open source PHP programming language and its related development tools, has delivered a new release of its suite of PHP tools. Zend Framework 1.7 includes a general release of the new DB2/400 adapter introduced earlier this year, which should improve the interoperability of PHP applications and DB2/400 data. The update also includes various other AJAX-related enhancements. Zend provided an early release of the DB2/400 adapter with the delivery of Zend Core for IBM i 2.6 in September. At the time, Zend said the new adapter would provide better, faster, and more

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