• SAP to Finally Ship Business ByDesign SaaS Suite

  February 1, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Two weeks ago, The Four Hundred told you that German application software giant SAP was projecting that it would beat Wall Street’s expectations for sales in its fourth quarter as it was at the same time saying that it would be rejiggering its support fees, presumably to counter complaints from customers that they needed cheaper support than SAP was providing. In its discussion of its results, the company said that it would finally be shipping its Web-based, hosted Business ByDesign suite this year. For the quarter ended December 31, SAP’s sales were pretty much the same as the preliminary results

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• IBM Preps Power7 Launch For February

  January 25, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Well, some of the mystery behind IBM‘s forthcoming and, as we now know impending, Power7-based Power Systems server launch has been solved. I said some of the mystery, so don’t get overly excited. As best as I can figure, I will still have some time to go through my hypothetical System iWant, 2010 Edition, product line before Big Blue actually gets the Power7 machines launched. But it also looks like I had better hurry. In going over IBM’s financial results for the fourth quarter of 2009 yesterday, Mark Loughridge, the company’s chief financial officer, gave a rundown on the

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• Looks Like i 7.1 Is Coming In April

  January 25, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The word on the street is that IBM is gearing up to get the future release of its i/OS all buffed and polished so it can ship sooner rather than later. Which is good news for the Power Systems i business partner community. A broad new announcement, which the future operating system, to be dubbed i 7.1 unless the current naming plan changes, represents exactly what resellers need to give them a reason to come a-calling on AS/400, iSeries, and System i shops. According to sources familiar with Big Blue’s plans, i 7.1 is slated for delivery during the third

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• The IBM Profit Engine Keeps A-Rolling in Q4

  January 25, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM may no longer be the top provider of IT products and services in terms of annual revenues, but it is by far more profitable than its larger rival, Hewlett-Packard, which became king of the IT hill last year with $114.6 billion in sales (in fiscal 2009 ended in October) but which, at $7.7 billion in net income, only brings a little more than half of what IBM does to the bottom line. In IBM’s full 2009 year, the company had sales of $95.8 billion, down 7.6 percent, but net income was up 8.8 percent to $13.4 billion. In

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• As I See It: What Did You Do At Work Today, Daddy?

  January 25, 2010 Victor Rozek

  Spot Quiz: What’s not a drug, but is addictive? What contains no alcohol, but provides a buzz? What’s not smoked, but alters brain chemistry? What’s not food, but produces cravings. Hint: In recent years, it has become a silent workplace epidemic. Every day millions of men (and to a lesser degree women) sequester themselves in offices around the country and, in an attempt to relieve stress, assuage boredom, or mollify intense biochemical urges, Google their favorite Internet porno site. “A whopping 25 percent of all daily Internet search engine requests and 35 percent of all downloads are for pornography,” report

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• The System iWant, 2010 Edition: Midrange Boxes

  January 25, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The midrange of IBM‘s Power Systems lineup is too complicated as it now stands, and IBM needs to once again simplify the product line while at the same time providing different chassis options to customers who have varying needs for peripheral storage such as disk, flash, and tape drives. With the launch of the Power7-based machines, due for their initial launch in February, likely with more machines rolling out as 2010 unfolds, Big Blue has a clean slate with which to work. Last week, I talked generally about some of the things that IBM should consider doing for its

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• Gartner: IT Spending Up, But Overall Budgets Flat, in 2010

  January 25, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Everything may not yet be coming up roses with the economy, but at least it doesn’t smell like the stuff you spread around the plants in the spring. The analysts who monitor the global economy and try to chart IT spending say that they anticipate that IT spending on hardware, software, services, and telecom will be up this year. However, based on surveys with chief information officers, it looks like IT budgets–including internal people costs as well as spending on IT wares–will be flat. So I guess we all know what that means. Some or perhaps all of that growth

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• IBM Promotes Future Power7 Unix Boxes in Ads

  January 25, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  I can hear the gnashing of teeth and see the clenching of fists already from the AS/400 midrange faithful as they rightfully ask: Where’s the i in the Power7 advertising budget? As The Four Hundred reports elsewhere, the cat is out of the bag and IBM is gearing up to launch Power7-based Power Systems in February, probably sooner rather than later. And last Thursday, on the very morning that Oracle announced it got regulatory approval from the European Union to acquire Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion, it was no surprise that IBM let loose some advertising in the Wall Street

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• European Union Approves Oracle Gobbling Up Sun Microsystems

  January 25, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The many-year drama and 25-year history of Sun Microsystems is nearly over, and a new page in the history of software giant Oracle is about to be turned as Oracle buys a hardware company that controls the Java programming language and attempts to transform itself into a provider of integrated IT stacks. While Sun’s own shareholders (including a number of venture capitalists who had kicked in funds to the struggling server maker over the years) and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division approved the $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun last summer, the European Union’s antitrust regulators have been stalling

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• IBM Tweaks Power Systems Trade-In Deal

  January 25, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In a move that probably has very little to do with the imminent launch of Power7-based servers, IBM last week tweaked a long-running trade-in deal to offer a nominal trade-in credit to customers using Power5 and Power5+ versions of the entry Power 520 servers running the i/OS. As you can see in announcement letter 310-110, all 9505 variants of the Power 520 lineup as well as 9406 variants of the 520 using processor features 7450, 7451, 7397, 7350, or 7352 are now eligible for a $450 trade-in credit if customers move on up to a Power6 or Power6+ version

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