• IBM Designates University of Nebraska as an iSeries Training Hub

  March 6, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In the summer of 2004, IBM launched a cross-platform education and training effort called the Academic Initiative that had the main job of getting colleges and universities around the world to use IBM hardware and software technologies in their coursework in computer science programs and to get many tens of thousands of students–the IT users and leaders of tomorrow–exposed to Big Blue technologies. Last year, IBM started focusing on specific platforms, particularly its iSeries and zSeries platforms, both of which have an aging workforce and which are arguably scarcer these days at colleges and universities than they were one or

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• ServerProven Rebate Program Gets Some Tweaks

  March 6, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For several years now, IBM has used its ServerProven rebate offering to help boost sales of its iSeries and xSeries servers and the third-party solutions that run on them. Last week, IBM made some tweaks the to latest ServerProven rebate, which was announced at the end of November 2005. The ServerProven rating means that a particular piece of software has been tested by IBM and its ISV partners to make sure it works properly on the latest server and operating system releases from Big Blue and that the combination is installed and running in at least one real-world account. IBM

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• OS/400 Servers Over Time: Stacking Up the Big Boxes

  March 6, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last week, we took a walk down Memory Lane for OS/400 server price/performance as it relates to small and midrange OS/400 servers in various power ranges, and this week, I wanted to examine how the biggest, baddest boxes match up across the past six years of the iSeries and System i5 product lines. As has been the case for years, the improvements in price/performance for the OS/400 line are slowing–particularly for large machines supporting large green-screen workloads. In fact, as was the case in a few comparisons for bigger midrange boxes in last week’s lineup of i5 520, i5 550,

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• Big ERP Package Buyers Get Big System i5 Rebates

  March 6, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If you are shopping around for a new ERP suite and you are looking at the various applications from the big, name-brand ERP software providers in the OS/400 market, then IBM has a rebate for you–provided you plan to buy a new System i5 or upgrade to one and buy implementation services from the software providers. Last week, IBM announced a rebate for System i5 purchases or upgrades when companies are deploying the application suites provided by International Business Systems, Infor Global Solutions, Intentia International, Lawson Software, Oracle, SAP, and SSA Global. The

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• Hosting is Increasingly Popular at OS/400 Shops

  March 6, 2006 Mary Lou Roberts

  Most of the analysts agree: Outsourcing (defined here as turning over all or part of the delivery of an IT service to a third party) is continuing to grow at a steady pace, in virtually all of its permutations. While the specifics of the projections may differ somewhat, no one seems to challenge the notion that, more and more, businesses are focusing on their core competencies–making and shipping goods, investing money, healing the sick, and selling products–and farming out the responsibilities for running increasing complex IT infrastructures. While OS/400 shops are not on the front end of this trend, they

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• Disk Array Sales Boom in Q4, Way Up for 2005

  March 6, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The server market might have seen a revenue decline and a shipment rate slowing in the fourth quarter of 2005, but the external disk array market has, according to researcher IDC, continued to boom. Specifically, external array sales exploded by 17.9 percent to hit $4.7 billion. Overall disk sales, including internal arrays in servers, grew at a nice clip, too, up 13.1 percent to $6.8 billion. When you do the math, it implies that internal array sales were up only 3.6 percent to $2.1 billion. Amazingly, storage capacity shipped in the fourth quarter was up 54.6 percent to 653

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• The Balance of Server Powers

  March 6, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For the past couple of decades, when people talked about computing power, it was understood that what they meant was the ability of a computer to do work of some sort–number crunching, database churning, transaction processing, or, more recently, data streaming. Power is work over time, and when you invest in a server platform, processing power was by and large what you were investing in. But computers have always have another kind of power associated with them, one that is less apparent except for those few who can still recall rooms full of white-hot vacuum tubs on very early electronic

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• Study Says One-Third of IT Workers Plan to Quit in 2006

  March 6, 2006 Alex Woodie

  One in three IT workers are planning to quit their current jobs this year, according to a survey conducted last fall by CareerBuilder.com, and released in February. Participants in the study cited huge and growing workloads, a lack of leadership, and unsatisfactory pay as the top reasons for wanting to jump ship. CareerBuilder.com reports that 61 percent of IT workers say their workload has increased over the last six months, and almost 50 percent say their workload is unmanageable. In terms of pay, it’s not surprising to hear that half of the participants were not happy with their pay

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• Lincoln to Open SQL

  March 6, 2006 Hesh Wiener

  In 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln. Today, one of his relatives, Cherie Booth (Blair), is the First Lady of the United Kingdom. In its youth, IBM was insanely jealous of its rivals. But by the mid-1970s, the mature IBM was so secure in its dominance of information processing that it felt it could, without risk, tell the world one all about one of its ideas, a database language called SEQUEL, later dubbed SQL. Today, competitors’ implementations of relational database engines built around SQL threaten to do to even more harm to IBM than the nearly

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• Lawson-Intentia Merger Enters Round Three with U.S. Regulators

  March 6, 2006 Alex Woodie

  Lawson Software re-filed a key document with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in mid-February regarding its planned merger with Intentia International. If the SEC gives its nod of approval, which could occur in the next few weeks, the companies would be free to complete their union. However, if the SEC does not approve the document and requires a fourth go-around, the companies could miss their April 30 deadline to complete the merger. Lawson and Intentia, two ERP software developers with strong OS/400 products and presence and similar Java re-development strategies, first unveiled plans to merge last June. The

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