• IBM Sells Printing Division to Ricoh for $725 Million

  January 29, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Seeking to further focus on its core server, storage, software, and services businesses in corporate computing, IBM announced last week that it was creating a joint printing business with Japanese printer and document management software partner (and sometimes rival) Ricoh Company. The joint business, called InfoPrint Solutions Company, will eventually control IBM’s entire Printer Systems Division, and will see Big Blue finally exit the printing business altogether. The spinout, which will take IBM an estimated three years to complete, is valued at $725 million. The divestiture of IBM’s enterprise printing business, which has always been located in Boulder, Colorado,

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• The Vanishing IT Woman–System i Women Respond

  January 29, 2007 Mary Lou Roberts

  Two weeks ago in this newsletter, we ran a story, Why the Number of Women in IT is Decreasing, examining research that has been performed by Gartner on this topic. Although the findings and recommendations about the differences between the sexes were Gartner’s and not my own, I did dust off my trusty Flak Jacket in anticipation of getting grief for covering such a politically incorrect topic. But you folks are apparently way ahead of me in acknowledging the obvious: Women are indeed making other choices–more suited, perhaps, to their needs and desires–and dropping out of the IT career

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• New Conference Riveted on RPG and DB2 Education

  January 29, 2007 Dan Burger

  Not everyone believes that continuing education and training is necessary or that it provides a return on investment to businesses that emphasize it with their IT staff. That’s an unfortunate reality in today’s workplace that is more prominent today than it was 10 or 20 years ago. At the same time, the opportunities for those seeking to expand their abilities and add value to themselves as employees have more choices than ever before. It’s as true in the System i world as anywhere else. For some folks, it’s not a matter of whether to get more education, but which choice

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• Oracle Preps Five Application Stacks for January 31 Updates

  January 29, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Application software powerhouse Oracle is preparing to update its five core application stacks on January 31, so if you are using Oracle ERP and CRM software, brace yourself for an impending update or upgrade. On the i5/OS and OS/400 front, Oracle will update its JD Edwards EnterpriseOne with the 8.12 release and JD Edwards World with the A9.1 “Renaissance” release. EnterpriseOne is written in a mix of Java and C++ generated code and runs on i5/OS-OS/400, Unix, and Windows servers, while the World applications are written in RPG and only run on the i5/OS and OS/400 platform. Oracle is also

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• IBM Updates Zend Core Redbook for Multiple Instances

  January 29, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM and Zend Technologies, which have been working together to bring commercial-grade PHP support to the System i5 and iSeries platform, have worked together to quickly update a new Redbook on PHP support to take into account new information concerning running multiple instances of the Zend Core PHP engine and the Apache Web server on the System i5 and iSeries. As I explained in last week’s issue, there has been some confusion about having multiple instances with Zend Core for i5/OS 1.6, the updated release of the Zend Core software that now supports OS/400 V5R3 as well as

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• SAP to Chase the SMB Market–Again

  January 29, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  While German ERP software giant SAP is pretty much synonymous with enterprise applications, it is debatable whether or not the company has been able to penetrate into the midrange market very far, and small businesses do not even come close to having budget for the company’s software and the hardware it requires. But SAP wants to change that, and it is willing to incur the wrath of investors and brokers to do a better job pursuing the SMB application software market. Last week, when SAP was announcing it preliminary financial results for the fourth quarter ended December 31, Henning Kagermann,

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• iSociety and IBM Open Up System i Innovation Challenge

  January 29, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For the past two years, as part of its campaign to reinvigorate the System i5 platform, IBM has been giving out innovation awards to companies and business partners that put the platform to good use. Now, the company and the iSociety community created last year wants to get students into the act, and will this week launch a parallel campaign called the System i Innovation Challenge. Registration for the competition will be open on February 1, and is open to college and university students in the United States and Canada who have little or no experience. With tongue firmly in

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• As I See It: Measuring What Counts

  January 29, 2007 Victor Rozek

  Some things are just perfect. The smell of a pie baking in the oven; the laughter of children at play; the satisfaction of reading a great book. Ideas are like that too. Some are so compelling as to be irresistible. The notion that all men are created equal. The admonition to do onto others as you would have them do onto you. President Kennedy’s challenge to shoot the moon. To a less dramatic degree, that’s the way I felt when I read David Cameron’s idea. He was certainly not the first to articulate this particular notion, much as Kennedy was

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• IT Salaries Rise by 5.2 in 2006, Dice Survey Says

  January 29, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The online technology and engineering career site Dice has just completed a Web-based poll of over 19,000 information technology professionals in the United States, and based on the data it gathered, Dice surmises that salaries across all titles and levels of experience rose by an average of 5.2 percent in 2006. Salaries are on the rise, say the analysts at Dice, in part because the market for IT professionals is tightening. The tightening of the IT labor pool was cited as a trend by a report put out in November 2006 by PricewaterhouseCoopers, called Technology Executive Connection–Successful Strategies for

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• IBM Sells Printing Division to Ricoh for $725 Million

  January 29, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Seeking to further focus on its core server, storage, software, and services businesses in corporate computing, IBM announced last week that it was creating a joint printing business with Japanese printer and document management software partner (and sometimes rival) Ricoh Company. The joint business, called InfoPrint Solutions Company, will eventually control IBM’s entire Printer Systems Division, and will see Big Blue finally exit the printing business altogether. The spinout, which will take IBM an estimated three years to complete, is valued at $725 million. The divestiture of IBM’s enterprise printing business, which has always been located in Boulder, Colorado,

  …

  Read more

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