Volume 15, Number 47 - November 27, 2006 Archives

Vision Solutions Sorts Out Executive Jobs, Product Plans After iTera Acquisition

November 27, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

High availability software maker Vision Solutions, which was acquired by private equity firm Thoma Cressey Equity Partners at the end of September, convinced that equity firm to pony up the cash to buy rival iTera at the beginning of this month. A few weeks after the announcement, Vision Solutions, as the merged HA firms are known, announced which executives from both firms would do what jobs at the company.

The company had already said that Nicolaas Vlok, who was the managing director of Idion Technology Holdings, the company that bought Vision Solutions in March 2000, would be the chief

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DataMirror Offers Year-End iCluster Deal, Reports Sales and Profits Are Up

November 27, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

High availability and data replication software maker DataMirror last week said that it was extending a discount deal on its iCluster high availability software for the OS/400 and i5/OS platform into next year. The company also reported its financial results for its third quarter of fiscal 2007.

Like other HA software vendors in the System i market, DataMirror is trying to capitalize on the revamped i5 Capacity BackUp server line, which IBM widened considerably this summer, and special financing and discount deals IBM has in place for the i5 line. DataMirror has been offering a 50 percent discount on the

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Don’t Wait Until 2008, Kick It Up to 11 in 2007

November 27, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

The latest rumor running around the System i community, which has not in any way been substantiated by IBM, is that the next round of i5/OS software and System i hardware announcements will be pushed to 2008. IBM executives have been prepping the System i community to expect the Power6 processors first in the System p AIX-Linux server line, but having no substantial announcements in the System i line would be unprecedented. And it is also a bad idea for the i5/OS and OS/400 ecosystem.

Heaven only knows what motivates server vendors to do what they do, to pick

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IBM Offers Linux Implementation Services Across All Systems

November 27, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

If you want to put Linux on an IBM server–no matter what Big Blue brand you are talking about–and you don’t want to be hassled by setting it up on the box, then IBM has a bunch of services for you.

IBM has announced three services for Linux, and they join a growing portfolio of services that Big Blue has “productized” over the past few months to make the consumption of services more like the consumption of hardware and software. Implementation Services for Linux Distributions brings one of IBM’s 7,000 Linux experts into your shop to put a commercial Linux

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Server Sales Perk Up a Little Bit in the Third Quarter

November 27, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

A bump in mainframe sales and the expansion of sales of blade servers were a big factor in a slight resurgence in server sales in the third quarter, according to market research from both IDC and Gartner. Both research firms tend to put out their numbers on the same day, and they take the pulse of the market in slightly different ways, but both agreed last Wednesday, when they put out their stats, that the third quarter was pretty good after relatively flat growth or declines in the prior several quarters.

According to IDC’s stats, which count the factory

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Seagull Software Shows Growth in First Half of Fiscal 2007

November 27, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Seagull Software, the Dutch supplier of development tools and middleware for the OS/400 and i5/OS platform, reported its financial results for the first half of fiscal 2007 ended October 31. While sales increased significantly in the period, expenses pushed down operating and net profits.

Seagull says that for the half-year period, it booked sales of $15.7 million, up 16 percent from the first half of fiscal 2006. Software license sales rose to $6.8 million, up 15 percent from the $5.9 million level from a year ago, while maintenance and other services sales were $9 million, up 17 percent from

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iSCSI for System i Update: Showing Some Promise

November 27, 2006 Dan Burger

The idea of bringing external System x and xSeries servers under the skins of System i servers seems to be picking up speed. It’s difficult to gauge how much speed, because IBM plays the “if I told you, I’d have to kill you” game when it comes to specific adoption rates, but it’s a good bet that the new iSCSI adapters and the increasing popularity of BladeCenter blade servers are responsible for a momentum in this area.

For those who are relatively new to the Windows integration game, the iSCSI (Internet SCSI) connection, which links external servers to the disk

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Don’t Wait Until 2008, Kick It Up to 11 in 2007

November 27, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Heaven only knows what motivates server vendors to do what they do, to pick

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As I See It: The Other “Tude”

November 27, 2006 Victor Rozek

It’s a wonder that the Thanksgiving holiday even exists. Consider that during their first years on the continent, the Pilgrims dug seven times as many graves as they built huts, yet still found reason to set aside a day of gratitude. Perched on the edge of an alien and seemingly hostile continent, knowing hunger, fear, and disease, they nonetheless saw value in expressing thanks. It was an extraordinary affirmation that deep within every manure pile lies a pony; or perhaps (from the natives’ point of view) that no pile is so high that it cannot get higher.

I, on the

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