• IBM Puffs Up New Public, Private SmartCloud Releases

  June 4, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Just like any other product, public and private clouds have to change and evolve to get more relevant and to keep pace with the competition. IBM has made a lot of promises with its SmartCloud private cloud infrastructure, which you install in your data center to create virtual cloudy server and storage slices, and its SmartCloud Enterprise and Enterprise+ clouds, which Big Blue launched a little more than a year ago and said it would flesh out a bit more. With a bunch of announcements just before the Memorial Day holiday here in the United States, IBM is making good

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• Power Systems Power Through Server Downturn

  June 4, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There were two bright spots in the server racket in the first quarter of this year, according to market researcher Gartner, and one of them was IBM‘s Power Systems iron. The other, of course, was the cohort of X86 server makers, who are gnawing at the flesh of Unix and proprietary server makers while the Unix vendors are busy taking pieces out of one another’s hides. The economy is still jittery in a number of parts of the world, and the server biz is losing a bit of its oomph. But don’t get the wrong idea. There’s a

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• DB2 For i? This Is SQL Server Calling

  June 4, 2012 Dan Burger

  Separate from the issue of RPG programmers doing Web development, application modernization, and DB2 for i modernization is the fact that many IBM midrange shops have Windows application development taking place, too. Often, the Microsoft platform has taken the lead in Web development. When that happens, eventually the business managers decide information residing in DB2 for i is going to be needed for .NET applications. And this can make you wonder whether the i in IBM i really stands for integration. Two words that come to mind in any discussion about cross-platform database development are complexity and performance. Ideally, we

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Outer Burroughs

  June 4, 2012 Hesh Wiener

  Smack in the middle of his literary career William S. Burroughs, eponymous grandson of the founder of the company that eventually made Burroughs computers (now part of Unisys), wrote Naked Lunch. There’s a section in the younger Burroughs’s book about an entertainer whose act involves speaking through his rear end. Eventually the rear end develops its own personality and tells the entertainer it is in charge now. IBM didn’t invent Indian computer services companies, but by offshoring its services workforce, it did foster their legitimacy in corporate America. Now multi-billion-dollar Indian services firms are growing three, four,

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• RDP 8.5 Brings New RPG Views, Hooks To Team Concert

  June 4, 2012 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week announced version 8.5 of Rational Developer for Power Systems Software (RDP), its suite of development tools for writing IBM i, AIX, and Linux applications for the Power Systems server line. The new release of RDP brings two IBM i-related enhancements, including a “live outline” view of RPG code and better hooks into the Rational Team Concert change management system. IBM also unveiled version 8.5 of Rational Developer for i for SOA Construction, which brings several HATS enhancements. There are 10 different tools that fall under the Rational Developer for Power umbrella. Nine of these feature the “Rational

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• Reader Feedback On Pocket Litter, On Spooky Action, and On A House of Many Windows

  June 4, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Victor: My name is Chipper Miller and over the years I have enjoyed many of your articles. This most recent one regarding social media, As I See It: A House of Many Windows, was spot on. I have a friend at church and she says her daughter is really isolated due to Facebook, the computer, etc. Again, thank you for your contributions. One of my favorites was Out of the Blue: Uncivil Action, which very much described a situation I had been in. Two co-workers (one was an owner) were very hostile and vicious, and I was beginning

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• CEOs Say Get Connected Or Get Left Behind

  June 4, 2012 Jenny Thomas

  None of us have a crystal ball, but that doesn’t stop us from trying to predict the future. So what’s the best way to plan for what might be coming down the road? If you’re IBM, you start by asking 1,709 friends for their outlook on what lies ahead. IBM recently conducted face-to-face interviews with just a shade over 1,700 CEOs, general managers, and senior public sector leaders from 64 countries in 18 industries around the globe. Big Blue wanted to know how these individuals are dealing with rapidly converging digital, social, and mobile technologies. This convergence, aptly coined

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• BCD Adds New Partners In The United Kingdom and Ireland

  June 4, 2012 Dan Burger

  Business Computer Design, Intl., creator of popular IBM i application modernization tools, is expanding its business partner network in the United Kingdom and Ireland by teaming with IT services and solutions provider Proximity Resourcing and systems integrator CSI. The two companies operate separately but share a single business management team. Each has been a BCD customer for years and both have done development and application modernization projects using BCD WebSmart and Presto tools. The partnership is intended to improve the availability of BCD’s solutions in the U.K. and Ireland and broaden the portfolios of Proximity and CSI with

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• Jack Henry Sees Steady Improvement In Fiscal Q3

  June 4, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Banking software and services provider Jack Henry says that as far as it can tell, the economy continues to mend among the small and midrange banks that are its dominant customers. Many of Jack Henry’s customers are users of Power Systems running the IBM i operating system, so that is good news. In the third quarter of fiscal 2012 ended in March (why do companies unnecessarily have fiscal years that don’t match calendar years?), the company’s software licensing revenues were up 15 percent, to just a hair over $15 million. Hardware sales, which have been on a downward trend for

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• The Magic Continues In The First Quarter For Magic Software

  June 4, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Magic Software Enterprises turned in its best year ever in 2011, and the momentum is continuing in the first quarter of this year. In the quarter ended in March, Magic Software brought in just over $30 million in revenues, a 17.9 percent increase over the year-ago period. Gross profits rose by 27 percent, to $13.1 million, and even though research and development costs rose by a factor of 2.5 to $906,000 and other costs were on the rise, too, net income at Magic Software shot up even faster, by 31.7 percent to $4.2 million. Guy Bernstein, CEO at the company,

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