• Budget For Infrastructure And Shared Systems, Say IBM Top Brass

  October 28, 2013 Dan Burger

  The more that IBM‘s enterprise computing business changes, the more it stays the same. Last week at the Enterprise 2013 conference, a newly constructed crossroads of Power Systems and mainframe technologies, the big dogs in IBM’s Systems and Technology Group preached unprecedented changes in IT while also emphasizing centralized computing, a strategy that it has always promoted as the best way for enterprises to operate. The audience seems tentative about the first, while being solidly behind the second. Analytics, cloud, social, and mobile are all barreling down the road at the same time. Individually they are more than a

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• Big Data, OpenPower Are Big Levers For Power Systems

  October 28, 2013 Dan Burger

  Doug Balog, the general manager for IBM Power Systems for right around three months, was the big data evangelist at last week’s Enterprise2013 conference in Orlando, Florida. In the context of his presentation, he referred to data as the “new national resource” and described Power Systems as “a great box for data analytics.” Although he lauded Power Systems hardware for its ability to do high performance analytics and its “massive compute capabilities” with parallel processing, plenty of cores, lots of threads per core, and high I/O, he followed that up by adding that “conversations with customers are about problems and

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Nice Clients, Shame About The Servers

  October 28, 2013 Hesh Wiener

  Reporting quarterly results, Microsoft said business customers are buying tons of software, more than offsetting a slump among consumers who prefer tablets to PCs. That’s a mixed picture, but a cheerful story compared to that of IBM. Big Blue’s best-selling computers are Linux engines for mainframes. Power server revenue is down 38 percent at a time when, paradoxically, the market is offering IBM a superb opportunity: There are TN5250 and TN3270 apps for the newest tablets and smartphones, even models still in the pipeline. Yet IBM is moping when it should be throwing a Bring Your Own Green Screen

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• Being CIO At IBM Means You Are IT

  October 28, 2013 Dan Burger

  Being the CIO at IBM must be like being the top tailor at Ralph Lauren or the number one test driver at Ferrari. It’s a great job, but you have more eyes watching you than a Siamese cat at a German Shepherd police dog academy. Jeanette Horan doesn’t seem to notice, even though there are 470,000 IBMers in 140 countries depending on her to deliver IT services like it was a box of doughnuts. Expectations? Yeah, you might say there are a few. Horan’s job is essentially to put into practice what IBM preaches. Ideas are only worth the paper

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• Reader Feedback On Modern, Free-Form RPG New Bloods

  October 28, 2013 Hey, Alex

  Well, maybe! As an IBM SE for many years, I found that business types could relate well to RPG as it was what it was, and they were not looking for bells and whistles. They were looking for solutions to problems for their companies. The new programmer learns on Windows and in most cases may know an awful lot but have little respect for the business of business. I loved helping these business types who were anointed to become programmers. I helped them know how to solve business problems with a business programming language. It was not so bad back

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• Nothing Funny About Latest IT Jobs Numbers

  October 28, 2013 Jenny Thomas

  The economy added 148,000 jobs last month. Of course, all those people were hired to fix the Obamacare website. Funny, yes, but if only Jimmy Fallon’s recent Tweet on the latest job report were true, at least for our little sector of the world. The sad truth is the IT job market has been trending in the wrong direction and the September numbers marked the third month in a row of a slowdown in the creation of new IT jobs. The folks at Janco Associates watch the IT jobs market very closely and release their analysis of the national numbers

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• Avnet Makes Up Server Decline With Software, Storage, And Services

  October 28, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The Technology Solutions group at master distributor Avnet is one of the largest middlemen in the server distribution racket, and as expected, with Intel in the middle of processor transistors for its Xeon line, it was a bit tough going for system reselling in the first quarter of fiscal 2014 for the company. But sales of software, storage, and services were a different story. In the quarter ended in September, Avnet’s overall sales were $6.35 billion, up 8.1 percent, and net income was $120.6 million, up 20.3 percent thanks to product mix and cost-cutting initiatives launched earlier this year. In

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• ‘Puffery’ Claim Leads to Another Delay in Maxava-Vision Trial

  October 28, 2013 Alex Woodie

  The judge overseeing the legal dispute between IBM i high availability software vendors Maxava and Vision Solutions last month delayed the trial, which was scheduled to begin October 22. The judge decided to continue the pretrial conference until Halloween to give him time to respond to Vision’s request to restrict Maxava’s ability to introduce evidence of alleged statements by the defendants that were “mere puffery” and not violations of the law. At the September 23 pretrial conference, Judge George Wu rejected the Vision and Sirius “motion in limine” for an entry of judgment. That was one of two filings that

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• Cloud and HANA Grow, Software Slows At SAP In Q3

  October 28, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The shift from software licensing for internal use to renting software on a cloud continues apace at application software giant SAP. In its third quarter, SAP’s software license sales were down and its cloud sales were up, and cloud revenues rose fast enough to more than offset license declines. In the period ending in September, SAP had €975 million in software license revenues, down 5 percent, but cloud subscriptions and support more than tripled to €191 million. SAP now has cloud revenues in excess of a €1 billion annual run rate, and has 33 million seats on its cloud.

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• Will Modern, Free-Form RPG Bring New Blood To The Platform?

  October 21, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Veteran RPG coders around the world are getting in a free format frame of mind in anticipation of the launch of IBM i 7.1 TR7 next month. While getting experienced RPG programmers to write more modern looking syntax is great, the real promise of free format RPG is the potential to get more people–particularly younger coders, but not necessarily students–interested in RPG. The big question is: Will it work? The IBM i platform could definitely use an RPG-shaped shot in the arm, because the pool of experienced RPG programmers is shrinking every year. Whether it’s shrinking as fast as the

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