• IBM Touts Power Systems Prowess on SAP Tests

  July 13, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For whatever reason–and we all have our guesses on this–IBM has not seen fit to run the SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) benchmark test on Power-based servers running OS/400 or i operating systems for a number of years. But it still does run the test on Power iron using its AIX operating system and DB2 database variant for Unix, Windows, and Linux platforms. We are left to infer how well or poorly the i/DB2 for i combo does. Like many of you, I find this annoying. But we have to work with the data that Big Blue gives us

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• IBM Indeed Relaunches Tweaked Power Systems Deal

  July 13, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As The Four Hundred suggested it might do two weeks ago, IBM has indeed put out another in a long line of rebate offerings for customers deploying Power-based systems and systems and application software from a select list of independent software vendors. The configuration of the deal is just a little bit different from what we had heard a few weeks ago. The deal, known formally as the Software Solutions for IBM Power Systems First-in-Location Rebate Offering, is outlined in detail in announcement letter 309-546, dated June 29. And it has a slightly different flavor from past deals

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• Focus on Data Management with App Modernization Projects

  July 13, 2009 Dan Burger

  Companies getting into application modernization projects have their hands full. That’s not necessarily because the modernization project is a nightmare for IBM i shops. Nearly 100 percent of IT departments are struggling to keep up with the work before the modernization project came on the radar screen. But modernization planning is a top priority. Trevor Perry–an application modernization evangelist and strategist, who also is a veteran AS/400 programmer–agrees. Not surprisingly, he has some unique ideas on the topic. Perry is a self-acknowledged big-time yakker. Some say he can talk the ear off a statue without even stopping to take a

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• As I See It: The Green Gap

  July 13, 2009 Victor Rozek

  When the Great Economic Recovery finally arrives, many expect it to be riding a Green mount. No other sector, not even healthcare, has such potential to resuscitate the wheezing marketplace. The employment prospects alone can make a Job Czar tremble with anticipation. Two-and-a-half million jobs have the potential to transform the brown economic landscape into verdant shades of cash. And since IT percolates into all corners of all sectors, some of that employment should inevitably flow our way. These days, however, America’s problem-solving prowess is more challenged than a German lullaby. Looking for answers to problems too long ignored, the

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• Gartner, Forrester Chop IT Spending Forecasts Again

  July 13, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  This is starting to get ridiculous. And certainly frustrating. But absolutely understandable. The economists that work at IT market researchers and consultancies Gartner and Forrester Research have once again sliced their IT spending projections, and this time around you can’t blame the negative growth on the currency effects of translating sales of hardware, software, services, and sometimes telecom to U.S. dollars. This time, there is real decline, and it appears to be across the board. Gartner has shaken its crystal ball–maybe it was a snow globe, or a Magic 8 ball?–and says in its latest prognostications that global IT spending

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• 2008 Pretty Good for Application Software; 2009, Not So Much

  July 13, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The analysts at AMR Research have finished calculating how much application software the top independent software vendors were able to sell in 2008, and believe it or not, despite the economic meltdown that hit last summer, 2008 was a pretty good year. However, according to the analysts at AMR, 2009 is shaping up to be a disappointment. But not a disaster, so don’t get carried away. As you can see from the teaser executive summary that AMR put out for its Global Enterprise Application Market Sizing Report, 2008-2013, the company is being deliberately vague about precisely how the six

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• EGL Free: More Data, Tool Expected This Summer

  July 13, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Will Smythe, the product line manager for the Rational Business Developer and EGL development tools at IBM, has updated the FAQ about the forthcoming EGL Free tool that our Four Hundred Stuff newsletter told you about a few weeks ago in great detail. EGL Free, if you didn’t catch that story, is a free, unsupported version of IBM’s EGL development tools that ride atop the open source Eclipse integrated development environment (or IDE’s that support the Eclipse framework). According to the updated FAQ, EGL Free will require a few hundred megabytes of disk space and 1 GB of

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• Lawson Boosts Profits Even as Economic Meltdown Bites

  July 13, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is not an easy time to be selling application software and implementation services to IT shops right now, which are hunkered down awaiting the economic storm to die down so they can get back to sailing. Lawson Software, one of the key players in the Power Systems i platform, reported its fourth quarter and year end financial results for fiscal 2009 last week, and the numbers could have been worse. For the fourth quarter ended May 31, total revenues at Lawson dropped by 20 percent to $186.2 million, but the company was quick to point out that at

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• Valid Tech Names Pat Botz Its President

  July 13, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Valid Technologies, a maker of biometric security technology located in Boca Raton, Florida, has named long-time IBM security expert and independent security consultant Pat Botz to be president of the company. Botz, who has been gracious enough to contribute a number of security articles to our Four Hundred Guru newsletter, has a long career that began at supercomputer makers Control Data and ETA Systems, a Unix workstation spin-off of CDC. (Botz led the design of ETA’s computer-aided design software.) In his 19-year career at IBM, Botz had a lot of positions, eventually becoming the security architect for the AS/400

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• COMMON 2010: Bring Your Own Booze (And I Will)

  July 13, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is hard to believe it, but the COMMON midrange user group is coming up on its 50th anniversary. And like other user groups and trade shows that have been put under pressure by the lack of funds for travel and training and the increasing workload we all seem to be carrying, COMMON is facing some pretty stark realities. That’s why Wayne Madden, COMMON’s newly appointed president, sent a letter recently to the volunteers that truly make COMMON what it is–a user group by users and for users–to give them a sense of what the 2010 COMMON meeting has in

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