• Network Technology Acquires Twinax, Token Ring Assets from NLynx, Madge

  March 20, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  After more than a decade of commercialized Internet networking technology, you would be reasonable in thinking that for the most part, the twinax workstation and various twinax routers and switches were a dead market, and that similarly, was demand for Token Ring networking technologies. Both of these technologies were created by IBM for its minicomputer lines decades ago, and they are all but gone from the IT landscape. All but, but not quite, and that is why British company Network Technology has snapped up the Token Ring and twinax assets of NLynx Technologies and Madge. The fortunes of NLynx have

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• Business Survey Says Cyber Crime Overtakes Physical Crime

  March 20, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  According to a global survey of over 3,000 IT managers spanning all industries and company sizes commissioned by IBM, cybercrime is becoming more of a big deal for big business than real–what IBM calls physical–crime. To publicize the study, IBM released some of the findings among the 600 IT managers who were surveyed in the United States in last January and December. About 60 percent of those polled believe that the cost of lost revenues, loss of current and potential customers, and loss of employee productivity that are the result of hacking, denial of service, and other cybercrimes now

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• i5 Memory and Disk Prices Need to Come Down

  March 20, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Over the past few weeks, I have presented a bunch of stories that have profiled the cost of AS/400e, iSeries, iSeries i5, and System i5 servers over time. The comparisons looked at the cost and performance of barebones servers as well as reasonable base configurations with various amounts of 5250 processing capacity on them. But the server is only a third of the story. At its most basic level, a system is comprised of a processor, its memory, and its disk storage, and ignoring software–which is almost always a good thing to do, if you ask me–these three items make

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• Big Blue Lets Big Partners Collaborate with IBM Research

  March 20, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As part of the announcements that it made at the PartnerWorld reseller and partner shindig that IBM hosted in Las Vegas last week, the company announced that it had created a new collaboration initiative that would allow business partners to collaborate with IBM Research to put those PhDs to work solving real business problems. The program, which will be launched in the second quarter through the PartnerWorld Industry Networks organization, will put some 3,000 researchers who work at various facilities in China, India, Switzerland, Israel, Japan, and the United States at the disposal of selected business partners. Presumably, the partners

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• Second-Hand iSeries Boxes Are Pretty Cheap

  March 20, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As we all know, the reliability and stability of the AS/400 and iSeries servers made by the good people in Rochester, Minnesota, are legendary, as was the ruggedness of the System/36 and System/38 before them. The fact that RPG is a relatively stable language, too, and is supported in both source and binary form on a range of machines that now spans a decade means that if your performance needs are modest, there is a used iSeries somewhere that can meet your processing and possibly your budgetary needs. In days gone by, when there were far more ISV partners and

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• Seagull Bolsters SOA Strategy with an Acquisition and a Partnership

  March 20, 2006 Dan Burger

  Seagull Software, with its mission of transforming legacy business applications into service oriented architecture Web services, has acquired assets from Farabi Technology in this area. Seagull now owns all of Farabi’s software products and intellectual property, the Farabi brand name, and the company’s installed base of customers. Farabi, a Montreal, Canada-based company that specializes in emulation and integration software, has been successful in the OS/400, mainframe, and Windows markets, but in recent years its OS/400 presence has diminished as its Microsoft-friendly emphasis switched to more of a mainframe and Unix orientation. Its flagship product, the HostFront Enterprise Server

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• Microsoft to Lure Competing Business Partners to Windows

  March 20, 2006 Alex Woodie

  Microsoft is in the middle of ramping up a new program to convince independent software vendors (ISVs) to make the move from OS/400, Unix, Linux, and other platforms to the Windows Server System. Under the “NXT” program, Microsoft is offering resources to ISVs in exchange for migrating ERP, supply chain, and other enterprise applications to Windows. NXT is currently in a pilot mode, and Microsoft expects to bring it to full force later this year. According to the NXT Web site at www.isvnxt.com, Microsoft is targeting ISVs–with more than $5 million in revenues–that are interested in migrating their non-Windows

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• AttachmateWRQ Expands Market Reach and SOA Technologies

  March 20, 2006 Dan Burger

  AttachmateWRQ, a company that many iSeries shops recognize from the days when it was two separate vendors (Attachmate and WRQ), has recently completed the acquisition of OnDemand Software, a company that develops software management and distribution solutions for companies large and small. AttachmateWRQ, which has grown to become one of the leaders in multi-host access and integration, did not disclose the terms of the acquisition, which it can do because it is a private company. By adding the acquired technology to AttachmateWRQ’s sales and channel organization, AttachmateWRQ is expected to strengthen and consolidate its position in the desktop

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• COMMON’s Curriculum Is OK; It’s IBM that Needs to Change

  March 20, 2006 Brian Kelly

  The COMMON conference, which gets underway next week, has always been a great place to be–even now in its reduced state of capabilities and offerings. It is still an awesome education deal. It’s just not as much fun anymore, and while that is important, there are other things that are more important. Like RPG and DB2/400. From my first session, I was in awe of such a wonderful conference for many reasons – not just education. In many ways, other than the respectable dress code, it was very much like a King’s College outing as I recall them from when

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• Azul Systems Sues Sun Over Java Licensing

  March 20, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  One of the coolest and potentially disruptive technologies of 2004 and 2005 was the Java appliances launched by Azul Systems, a startup founded by some chip designers and being run by a bunch of ex-employees from Sun Microsystems. Sun and Azul are apparently not seeing eye-to-eye about Azul’s status as a licensee of Java technology, so much so that Azul last week sued Sun. According to a statement put out by Azul, which characterized the suit as “fending off predatory attacks” from Sun, its lawyers have filed a suit in the U.S. Federal District Court for Northern California

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