• Saddle Up, Pardner

  March 5, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It was almost a foregone conclusion, given its application-centric nature, that among all the various systems and servers that Big Blue has sold over the decades that the AS/400 and its progeny would be the platform most dependent on the reseller and software vendor communities that sprang up around it to sell it and create application software for it. IBM does not provide statistics about its Power Systems-IBM i business any more, but these business partners are still a key component of the ecosystem. Even if their several thousand numbers are dwarfed by the overall 121,000 business partners that IBM

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• Server Sales Slump A Little In Q4

  March 5, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Conspiracy theorists think that PC and server makers are making a little too much about the impact of the flooding in Thailand, which led to disk shortages and therefore lower than expected shipments of both PCs and servers in the waning months of 2011. But according to the analysts at Gartner, a shortage of disk drives was one of the contributing factors in a fourth quarter that was a little bit weaker than it might otherwise have been. Not that the situation was all that bad, particularly when measured up against the declines in server revenues and shipments during

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• RFID Looks Better Without The Hype

  March 5, 2012 Dan Burger

  As technology priorities go, RFID seems to be the cheese that slipped off the cracker. You may remember the projections for market adoption that were being tossed around five or six years ago that never came close to reality. As recently as two years ago, the marketing drums still beat loudly. Business focus on cost containment and risk avoidance put the double whammy on RFID. Didn’t kill it–activity can still be found in niches such as the apparel and electronics industries–but the drums are noticeably quieter. Maybe that’s a good thing, because it’s much easier to see the supply chain

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• As I See It: Unhappy Anniversary

  March 5, 2012 Victor Rozek

  There aren’t many days when I wake up deciding to annoy a lot of people. Nor is this one of them. But that’s the risk a writer takes when tackling any controversial subject: passions run high, tolerance runs low, and minds are usually made up before a single word is uttered. Over the years, few issues have been more polarizing than Affirmative Action, a program which is either: a) well-intended and successful, b) imperfect but still necessary, c) unfair and outdated, or d) outright racist, depending on your point of view. Like it or not, Affirmative Action has been part

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• SEC Investigation Weighs On JDA Software

  March 5, 2012 Alex Woodie

  An investigation into the revenue-recognition accounting practices of JDA Software caused the software company to miss the deadline for the filing of its annual report last week. JDA received a note of non-compliance from NASDAQ, which gave the software company 60 days to file the report. JDA disclosed that it was the subject of an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in a press release about its fiscal 2011 and fourth quarter financial results, which it posted in on January 31. The company says the SEC’s corporation finance and enforcement divisions are looking into JDA’s revenue recognition and

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• Reader Feedback On: The Application RISC Machine System/500

  March 5, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Interesting article. . . . Your comment: “But so were the IBM Fort Knox and Future Systems projects, too.” They both failed big time. I’m not sure if younger readers know this. I can’t address all the features you discussed. My hang-up has always centered around programmers and operators (in the loosest sense) who keep getting themselves in trouble and it takes too much time and money to pay a consultant to pull them out of a ditch. We (IBM) should have learned by now how to properly instrument, analyze, and recommend “fixes” before they become problems, not after the

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• IBM’s Spring Ritual: Job Cuts

  March 5, 2012 Dan Burger

  It’s almost a traditional rite of spring at IBM. Call it spring house cleaning . . . if you have a gallows sense of humor. Jobs were on the chopping block last week as Big Blue added slightly more than 1,200 employees to the unemployment statistics, according to statistics provided by Alliance@IBM, an IBM employee advocate group that is aligned with the Communications Workers of America trade union. The Global Technology Services (GTS) division received the deepest cuts, with 691 jobs eliminated. The Application Management Services (AMS) division was trimmed of 118 jobs. The Systems Technology Group (STG)

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• IBM i Is Looking Very Collegiate

  March 5, 2012 Dan Burger

  Last week I was talking with Jim Buck, who heads up the IBM i curriculum at Gateway Technical College in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Each year the best of the Gateway graduates find their way into jobs with IBM i shops. It’s a credit to Buck’s dedication and understanding of the importance of blending specialized training with the ability to solve business problems. He’s very well networked in the business and education communities, and supports COMMON as a volunteer on educational committees. Buck’s efforts have been rewarded with the COMMON Education Foundation Scholarship Award and the System i Innovation Award for Education

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• IBM Helps Open Schools For The Next Generation Of IT Workers

  March 5, 2012 Jenny Thomas

  The importance of a good education is universally accepted, but it is no longer a guarantee of a good job. In fact, in many instances, a degree doesn’t guarantee any type of job these days. Which is why we should all be happy to hear that IBM is looking to change the odds of America’s students landing a job after graduation. Last week, IBM released a “playbook” to help educators and business leaders in IT build schools specifically designed to connect public education to employment. At the same time, IBM announced a plan developed with the City of

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• Reader Feedback On Thinking Strategically About IT As A Service

  March 5, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Hi, Dan: There’s too much talk about the dollars and cents equation. If all of IT is reduced to the budget equation, as CFOs can and often do, then the ability to use IT as a resource to gain and keep a competitive edge is lost. Outsourcing, SaaS, cloud, GUI, web, and so on are all used as market buzz by vendors looking to sell. I especially tire of rags constantly quoting vendor staff when it’s obvious where the spin lies. Not all of IT can be reduced to an enterprise application solution or even a web-enabling green screen tool.

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