• Sun Backs Into the SMB Customer Space

  March 24, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Server and operating system maker Sun Microsystems is known for being a player in the data center, but its servers are not known to be popular among small and medium businesses. And Solaris, like Linux and unlike Windows, is not exactly known as an appropriate platform for SMB shops. But, with a new focus on SMB sales, Sun has committed itself to chase down the SMB customer base to peddle its entry servers, mainly because IT spending in SMB shops is growing a lot faster than spending in the big data centers where Sun is a player. Beep. Beep. Beep.

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• Bain Capital Walks Away from $2.2 Billion Acquisition of 3Com

  March 24, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The drama in the private equity markets continued last week as credit continues to tighten despite the efforts of the world’s central banks, and in the case of the $2.2 billion proposed acquisition of VOIP wannabe 3Com, one of IBM‘s key partners as it pushes server-based telephony, the drama has taken a political turn as Bain Capital Partners, which said it would buy 3Com last September, said the deal was coming under pressure from Uncle Sam and therefore killed it. In a statement released last Thursday, Bain Capital Partners said that the Committee on Foreign Investment in

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• IBM Raises Prices on Zend PHP Tools, Tweaks DB2 Web Query Charges

  March 24, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As part of its price change announcements last week, IBM radically increased the prices it charges for various production PHP software for the OS/400 and i5/OS platform from Zend Technologies. The company also tweaked some prices up and down for the new DB2 Web Query database query kicker to Query/400, which IBM created through an OEM partnership with Information Builders, and changed some support prices on its recently acquired DataMirror high availability clustering software. The price changes on the Zend tools will be a bit shocking to customers, particularly small companies who might have been under the impression

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• IBM Acquires Encentuate, Sets Up Security Software Lab

  March 24, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last week, Big Blue snapped up another small software company to build out its portfolio of products, specifically aimed at improving the single sign-on (SSO) capabilities of its Tivoli security and access control products. The company in question that IBM acquired is called Encentuate, which was founded by Peng Ong in 2001 after he took another company of his, called Interwoven, public. Interwoven is one of the big players in enterprise-grade content management systems, and is traded on the Nasdaq National Market. Before that, Peng was also a co-founder in a company called Electric Classifieds, which launched an

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• BMC Software Shells Out 800 Million Bucks for BladeLogic

  March 24, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Those with the cash can make the big deals now in the IT sector, and intrepid and entrepreneurial companies that might have otherwise been snapped up by competitors backed by private equity firms or just by the firms themselves are now being snapped up by larger IT players. And so it is with BMC Software‘s acquisition of BladeLogic, a maker of IT operations management software. BMC, which is probably best known in the midrange for its Patrol line of systems management tools, is betting pretty big on BladeLogic, which was founded in 2001 in Lexington, Massachusetts. To my

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• System i FACT Site–If You Like It, Tell IBM

  March 24, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For a number of years, IBM has been hosting a sub-site on its collection of Web sites called the System i Find And Compare Tool, or FACT for short. If you have been using this tool, IBM put a note up recently saying that any new and additional products added after March 3, 2008, would not be added to this tool. I didn’t even know the thing existed, to be honest with you, and having looked at it last week because someone told me it was not being updated any more, I can tell you that I wish that

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• Bye Bye System p and i, Hello Power Systems

  March 17, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It’s been a little more than a decade in the making, but I have a hunch that IBM is getting closer to doing with brands what it has already done with technology when it comes to its System i and System p Power-based machinery: consolidate. Server consolidation is one of the driving forces–if not the driving force–in the server racket these days, so there is logic here, and once IBM merged the System i and System p development and manufacturing operations into Power Systems last July, it has always been just a matter of time before Big Blue would do

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• The HP Pitch on Rehosting i5/OS Applications on Integrity

  March 17, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Having formally declared war for the umpteenth time on the mainframe last October with its Application Modernization Initiative in partnership with database maker Oracle and server chip maker Intel, Hewlett-Packard is gearing up to take a run at the OS/400 and i5/OS installed base. Getting customers to change platforms is never easy, even when they are not particularly happy, but rehosting environments certainly help and have always been part of such programs. And so it is with HP’s moves to get customers to leave their AS/400, iSeries, and System i servers. With Infinite Software (formerly known as California Software)

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• NetManage and Rocket Software Call Off Acquisition Deal

  March 17, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is a story that is playing out in every industry these days. The credit crunch on the world’s financial markets, caused by the American housing bubble popping and the consequent unraveling of the mortgage-backed securities that were making many of the big private equity firms flush with cash, has made it hard for companies to buy their way into new businesses. And so it seems to be with Rocket Software and its $69 million acquisition of host connectivity and application modernization software maker NetManage. Rocket Software, based in Newton, Massachusetts, is a privately held maker of utility software

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• As I See It: Bringing the Funny

  March 17, 2008 Victor Rozek

  One of the early traumas that children suffer is often at the hands of well-meaning parents who hire clowns to entertain at birthday parties. The grotesquely painted face, the loud unfamiliar costume, the over-sized feet, and the parental pressure to have fun because this is costing Daddy a couple-hundred bucks all combine to confuse and frighten the child. More than one party has been disrupted when the birthday celebrant runs off crying in search of his or her mother. Corporate parents–those practitioners of tough love known collectively as management–are bringing this same notion of traumatic fun to the workplace. Forget

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