• WebSphere Portal Remains the Industry Leader, Says Gartner

  July 7, 2008 Dan Burger

  Now that the enterprise portal market has topped $1 billion, it seems as though the momentum is building and substantial changes are taking place with regard to the acceptance of this technology and the development of the skills required to make it fly. What hasn’t changed is IBM‘s position as the top vendor in the portal server field. That position, however, is being challenged in the wake of database and application giant Oracle‘s acquisition of BEA Systems. Based on the calculations of the license counters at Gartner, IBM’s WebSphere Portal remains the revenue-generating leader for sales figures

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• Big Blue’s Power Systems Painted Green at OCEAN Tech Conference

  July 7, 2008 Dan Burger

  Energy inefficiencies and their rapidly escalating costs are being swept under the rug at most companies. Not intentionally, but as part of a routine that avoids taking a hard look at reducing these substantial costs. In the data center, real energy efficiencies are leading to considerable savings. That was the message Jeff Howard, director of Power Systems offerings at IBM, shared with attendees at the annual OCEAN midrange user group technical conference last week in Irvine, California. Where should IT managers look for energy abuse? X64 servers took a lot of the heat that Howard was dishing out. Utilization

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• The Relational Database Market Grows Decently in 2007

  July 7, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Here we are halfway through 2008, and only now is IDC coming out with its sales statistics for the relational database management system (RDBMS) market in 2007. But estimating database sales takes a whole lot more effort than counting up servers and calculating revenues by vendor, and it takes both IDC and Gartner to gin up statistics that they think accurately reflect what actually happened in the market. Hence, the lag. According to the figures released last week from IDC, the relational database market grew by 12.6 percent in 2007, hitting $18.8 billion in sales–a pretty hefty bump up from

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• Oracle Firing on All Cylinders Again in Fiscal Q4

  July 7, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  While database, application software, and middleware software provider Oracle missed the growth expectations that Wall Street had in its fiscal third quarter ended in February, the company seems to have more than made up for it with a strong finish in the fourth quarter ended in May. Oracle’s sales rose by 24 percent to $7.24 billion, and even at constant currency, the company’s global sales rose by 18 percent. This is real growth, and the kind of growth that Oracle was after when it did what seemed like a zillion acquisitions over the past couple of years. For the three

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• IBM’s AS/400 20th Birthday Party Pictures

  July 7, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When I was but a young cub reporter way back when (OK, in the late 1980s), I remember how Big Blue threw a party. Every year, members of the IT trade press in the New York area, even those who wrote for relatively tiny newsletters such as The Four Hundred, were invited to an annual Christmas bash hosted at the Plaza Hotel. Being a country bumpkin, I had never been to such a glamorous place, and I was impressed by the spread of food and booze that IBM put together to people who it would probably rather round up

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• Initial Uptake of JS12 Blades for i Platform Seems Good

  July 7, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Because IBM is in a quiet period before it announces its financial results for the second quarter, its executives can’t say much specific without getting into hot water with the Securities and Exchange Commission. But I was yaking on the phone with Scott Handy, vice president of marketing and strategy for IBM’s Power Systems division, just before IT Jungle went on vacation, and he gave me some early indicators of the popularity of Power6-based blade servers running the i 6.1 operating system. Specifically, Handy said that ISVs and resellers were banging on IBM’s door to get their hands on JS12

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• The AS/400’s Grandfather Talks Past, Present, and Future

  June 23, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When Frank Soltis, the chief scientist for the i platform, is introduced these says as the Father of the AS/400, he sometimes likes to point out that this is not exactly a correct title for him. Technically speaking, Soltis says, he is the grandfather of the AS/400, and in fact is a man who is celebrating many anniversaries relating to the computing platform this year–not just the 20th birthday of the AS/400, which happened on Saturday but which IBM is celebrating throughout the month of June around the world. As I told you would happen in my own homage to

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• IBM Offers Modest Discounts on i 525 and M25 Entry Boxes

  June 23, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The second quarter must be working out alright for the i platform, if the relative dearth of deals from IBM is any indication. Maybe Big Blue, its resellers, and its customers all agree that the new Power 520, 550, and 570 machines are all priced pretty much where they need to be, so there is no need to wheel and deal. But, some customers always need a little sweetener, and that is why IBM announced a rebate deal on the new and older generations of entry i platforms. The Power 520 Model M25 and System i Model 525 Express Introductory

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• Consistent Change Offers Adjunct Services for SoftLanding Tools

  June 23, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As all of us who grew up in the late 1960s and early 1970s can tell you, three is the magic number. And as many of you know, while working alone as an IT consultant and having the freedom to set your own work schedule, build your own client base, and do the kind of work you find rewarding is a beautiful thing, sometimes it would be very useful if we could get cloned and thereby cover more customers and leave less money on the table. That is, of course, why professionals form partnerships, and often they form limited liability

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• As I See It: Flights of Fancy

  June 23, 2008 Victor Rozek

  On December 7, 2005, the Air Force released its new mission statement: “The Mission of the United States Air Force is to deliver sovereign options for the defense of the United States of America and its global interests–to fly and fight in air, space, and cyberspace.” Besides noting that the Air Force should expand its mission to include hiring an English major to fix that tortured bit of writing, it is worth observing that the Air Force has taken an active interest in cyberspace. It’s all part of the NeoCon dream of world domination through a process of global militarization

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