Hesh Wiener
-
Mad Dog 21/21: Any Cloud Platform You Want, As Long As It’s X64
October 18, 2010 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreHenry Ford started selling Model T cars in 1908 at $825 a pop. Ten years later the price had come down to $360, and every one made was the same color. As Henry Ford said, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” Despite this lack of variety, the Model T accounted for half the cars in the USA. Today, Henry Ford might not make cars; he might build machines for cloud computing, where he could tell customers to take an X64 or take a hike.
You might think that
-
Mad Dog 21/21: Built Like a BRIC’s IT House
October 4, 2010 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreWhen a country spends more on computing, its economic growth is likely to be healthier–so Gartner says in its most recent discussion of IT spending in the BRIC countries. Gartner made this declaration at its most recent dog-and-pony show in Sao Paolo during mid-September. Brazil leads the BRIC countries and possibly the world in the portion of gross domestic product (GDP) it pumps into computing and its pace of spending on IT will grow during the next few years. The laggard BRIC, it turns out, is Russia.
Last year, end user companies in Brazil spent $88 billion, or 8.6
-
Mad Dog 21/21: Craft Nouveau
September 7, 2010 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreSomebody at Google knows about Bing. Not Bing the Microsoft googloid. Bing as in Siegfried (Samuel) Bing, the German expatriate whose Paris gallery, L’Art Nouveau La Maison Bing, founded in 1895, gave its name to a worldwide movement in art, craft, and design. A Google logo celebrated Art Nouveau on July 24, the 150th birthday of Czech illustrator and temporary Parisian Alphonse Mucha. Today, one can find that je-ne-sais-quoi of turn of the Twentieth Century Paris in cyberspace. Its message: Computing, to succeed, must, like the Eiffel Tower, marry art and science.
The Eiffel Tower, opened
-
Mad Dog 21/21: Back To School
August 9, 2010 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreBack to school? Already? Didn’t the kids just get out of school? Yes, yes, yes. But you sure can’t tell by the computer business, which has turned its calendar ahead. Corporate computer suppliers are chasing opportunities that formerly fell to consumers’ favorite vendors. Redefined laptops and desktops are spilling out far beyond the campus market; office computers are getting makeovers, too. Why should a corporate applications specialist care? Because new-fangled computers can louse up Webs, break intranets, confuse applications suites . . . and hide their mischief from developers.
The problems are the byproduct of progress. What’s new and generally
-
Mad Dog 21/21: Smart Cube Is IBM’s Half-AS Imitation of Apple
July 19, 2010 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreThere are something like 225,000 iPhone programs available for download from the Apple App Store. By contrast, there are only about 10,000 true iPad apps. Google’s Android phones have 75,000 apps on tap, more or less. The original Application System, the IBM AS/400, now called the i like Apple products (but easily distinguished by checking sales volume) has a pathetic Web store selling canned systems under the Smart Cube rubric. There are about 80 software packages, but only 26 of them are for the i; the rest are for Intel-based Linux servers.
You think I’m kidding? I’m not.
-
Mad Dog 21/21: Microclients: Thin Enough? Rich Enough?
June 28, 2010 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreIs corporate computing better off when end users have powerful Windows machines or relatively powerless thin clients? The answer is Yes. For the past couple years, computer makers have offered technology that lets users choose what kind of client they see when they boot up, but the vendors did a terrible job of selling this versatile concept. Now, however, things are starting to change. Microclient technology, which turns wide-open PCs into locked-down terminals, works well. One more thing: It is nearly free.
So just what is a microclient? It is a mix of hardware and software that turns any computer
-
Mad Dog 21/21: Market Cap and Propeller Beanies
June 14, 2010 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreLately, users of iSeries, System i, and Power Systems machines might wish their servers came from Apple, a company more famous than IBM for i stuff such as iPads, iPhones, iPods, iMacs. At least that’s how investors see things. At the beginning of June, Apple’s market capitalization was nearly $234 billion; IBM’s market cap was slightly over $160 billion, about a third less. The companies may be quite different, but in at least one way their computers are similar: IBM’s i and Apple’s Mac are both firmware cuckoos, the former hatched in a Power nest, the latter raised in
-
Glass i: Windows RPG for $50, 25 Users for $250
June 7, 2010 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreThe cost of business computing hasn’t fallen the way the cost of hardware has. The excuse is that a modern computer system does much more than data processing. But what if you only need the basics? What if you only want to write and run RPG programs? It turns out you can get this capability with a 50-dollar RPG package for Windows that will run on any Windows XP box. And if you want a centralized RPG system with 25 seats, you can get it for $250 plus the cost of the hardware. Here’s how to do it.
The thing
-
Mad Dog 21/21: Hot Deals and the Cool Server Nurseries
May 10, 2010 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreYou might not think that corporate computer executives shop for servers the way canny bargain hunters shop for laundry detergent, but if that’s how you see things you are missing something. Business buyers aren’t ashamed of cashing in coupons. If anyone is shy about doing business this way, it’s IBM. But with Power box sales down sharply, IBM has to stifle all that smart planet folderol and cut to the chase. By one means or another, Big Blue has to get the attention of prospective customers who like to play Dell or No Dell.
The users who chase
-
Mad Dog 21/21: When iCarus Is Bliss
April 19, 2010 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreMost people think Apple is terrific. It not only invents machines but also invents markets for its machines. But Apple isn’t quite as well loved within the high-tech world. Some outfits that make a big effort to be on customers’ A lists, including Adobe and Amazon, lack warm and fuzzy feelings when they think about Apple. Apple’s adversaries want Apple to become iCarus, who crashed and burned, not in that order, because he didn’t listen to his dad, Daedalus. Apple can be a poor listener, too. But Apple has been soaring.
Envious rivals want Apple to soar