Sales of RISC and Itanium processors running Unix or proprietary operating systems such as IBM i, OpenVMS, NonStop, and others have been taking it on the chin in recent quarters, and with these businesses down, Intel has wound up a haymaker that puts even more pressure on these platforms. It is called the Xeon E7 v2, and an update of the Power processor can’t get here soon enough.

Code-named “Ivy Bridge-EX,” the new chip from Intel is aimed predominantly at machines with four sockets or more, but there are also variants available for two-socket machines and both Silicon Graphics and

Major ERP implementations are like the footsteps of a giant. With each step the ground shakes and you can see terror in the eyes of everyone who feels the tremors. What if this thing fails? The path of destruction will be massive and the cost will be obscene. The fear of failing has stopped or postponed uncounted ERP upgrades. Fear can be a good thing. It can keep you alive, for instance. But it can also build confidence and inspire action.

In the IBM midrange community, ERP software has been around for decades. Having a rock-solid software/hardware combination for business

In a bid to make it easier for JD Edwards shops to upgrade their ERP systems, Oracle is moving its JD Edwards suites to a more agile product release cycle that emphasizes a continuous stream of product enhancements rather than periodic big-bang releases. The change in development cycle, which will impact both EnterpriseOne and World suites, was announced by Oracle at the recent JD Edwards Partners Summit, and corresponded with the release of JDE EnterpriseOne Tools version 9.1.4.

Lyle Ekdhal, the group vice president of the JD Edwards business at Oracle, apparently discussed the new agile development cycle during his

There would have been no AS/400 without it; no iSeries or System i or Power Systems, no servers of any kind, and no cloud in which to assemble them. Without it, there would be no smartphones, no tablets, no Internet. In fact, without some advanced evolutionary form of it, we would probably still be trolling around the African savannah looking for food. The “it” refers to the three pounds of our neuroanatomy that are the source of all human progress and invention: the brain.

If that was not immediately obvious, it is because (please forgive the pun) we don’t give

As I said at the beginning of the year, I expect that IBM will start wheeling and dealing to boost sales of its Power Systems machines ahead of the delivery of shiny new Power8 systems sometime around the middle of the year or so. If you have one of the midrange or high-end Power Systems machines that have latent processor cores or main memory in the box that has not yet been activated, then Big Blue has a deal for you.

With the Power Systems CUoD discount promotion, which you can see in announcement letter 314-021, IBM is slashing

Managed service providers who are looking to build public clouds based on Power Systems and X86 servers can now get PureFlex machines from IBM at a significantly reduced price.

The discount deal, which is detailed in announcement letter 314-017, is similar to a deal IBM gave to MSPs back in December 2012 for various Power Systems machines, including Power-based blade servers. The BladeCenter machines are basically in mothballs now, and have been replaced by PureFlex converged infrastructure. And thus the new MSP deal is focused on PureFlex machinery and the systems software that runs on it. This includes both

The significance of IBM de-emphasizing hardware and investing more in software and services can be seen in the reseller channel. Just take a look at the most recent financial report from one of IBM’s largest channel partners: Avnet.

Hardware sales, particularly servers, used to be a cash cow for the Technology Solutions group at Avnet. Back in the day, the master distributor sold AS/400s at a snow-shovels-in-Chicago pace. The revenue piled up like snow drifts. Avnet remains closely connected to a great number of AS/400, iSeries, and IBM i shops. But server revenues aren’t what they used to be.

Recognizing the potential for innovation. Developing and maintaining a strategic plan. Monitoring major projects. Setting priorities between IT and business processes. Allocating resources.

Who handles these jobs and what makes them good or bad at it?

Depending on the size of the organization, it could be any of a number of people at the executive level or maybe even the supervisory or managerial levels. But IT innovation and leveraging technology is a high priority with expectations of powering growth and providing competitive advantage. Someone needs to deliver on these promises.

For the past eleven years, COMMON has hosted an annual

Remember the contractual change that IBM put out a year ago, which was locking down access to licensed internal code for System z mainframes, Power Systems, and various storage arrays based on Power7 machinery? Fohgettaboutit, as we say in nearby Brooklyn.

In announcement letter 113-027 from last February, Big Blue said it had revised the terms and conditions to machine code on these machines, making it not only explicit that licenses to machine code cannot change hands, but that they may not do so without a customer signing a license acceptance agreement. The changes were supposed to go into

The four-year legal battle between enterprise software giant Oracle and third-party maintenance provider Rimini Street is not over. But it’s closer to finally going to a jury after a judge issued a partial ruling this month that granted Oracle summary judgment over Rimini’s handling of PeopleSoft customers. The court did not issue a ruling regarding Rimini’s handling of JD Edwards and Siebel clients.

Oracle sued Rimini in January 2010, alleging that Rimini’s third-party support business for JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel software infringed on Oracle’s copyrights, among 12 other allegations. While the companies continue to prepare for a jury trial,