Last week, at its Business Partner Leadership Conference in Los Angeles, IBM gave its partners and customers a sneak peek at a future application and systems strategy, code-named the “Blue Business Platform,” that Big Blue could roll out this year or next. While that doesn’t sound like much of a code-name, the Blue Business Platform project represents a new and potentially game-changing way in which IBM will chase the $500 billion IT market driven by small and medium businesses worldwide.

According to Mike Prochaska, program director for the Blue Business Platform, the project has been underway for the past nine

In these times of tight credit, cash is without a doubt king. Or at least a knight, considering how inflation is affecting the cost of the consumables we all buy to live. Nothing demonstrates the power of cash more than the contrast between Rocket Software‘s failed $69 million attempt to acquire host connectivity and application modernization software maker NetManage, which was launched in December 2007 and withdrawn in March because Rocket Software could not raise the capital it needed, and an a $73.3 million all-cash deal announced last Thursday by COBOL and application modernization tool maker Micro Focus

This week, IBM begins shipping the new Power6-based Power 570 and Power 595 servers that support the i, AIX, and Linux operating systems. And Big Blue is in the process of ramping up sales of the entry Power 520, which started selling in AIX and Linux edition in late January and which started shipping in i Editions on April 18, and midrange Power 550 servers, which also shipped earlier this year in an AIX and Linux Edition and which will hit the streets in an i Edition on May 23.

Of course, IBM is also shipping the JS12 and JS22

Editor’s note: IBM hosted its New Power Equation merger of the System i and System p server brands at the COMMON midrange user group meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, a little more than a month ago, and Neil Palmer, a long-time midrange expert and member of both COMMON and the Toronto User Group, prepared a statement, chock full of criticism and questions, to read to the top IBM brass. He didn’t get a chance to get the whole thing vocalized at the meeting, so we are giving him a chance to speak his mind, on your behalf, in The

One of the great things about modern servers is their ability to have extra and latent capacity hidden away inside their processor complexes, just waiting to be activated in the event of an emergency spike in application usage or as part of a normal system upgrade to permanently add new software to the box. This capacity on demand approach to building systems has been around since the end of the dot-com boom in the RISC/Unix space, and it has been a great thing for companies with modest workload growth and a desire to avoid system upgrades.

But there is a

Only a few weeks ago, a report issued by Gartner based on surveys of chief information officers and other executives in charge of IT spending suggested that budgets for computers and related software and services are holding up, more or less. The word from IDC for the IT sector in the United States only a month later is a little less sanguine.

Of course, IDC only did in-depth interviews with 27 IT shops as part of a recent presentation it put together, and while depth is always appreciated, breadth is necessary to determine a trend, too. That said, information is

Here’s something that every computer should have today–and probably will at some point in the not-too-distant future. This Tuesday, the high-end, Power6-based Power 570 and Power 595 servers start to ship, but one technology that allows for the hot addition and repair of server motherboards–what IBM calls processor books–without having to power down the systems is still slated for later this year.

According to a statement of direction from Big Blue, a future firmware upgrade for the Power 595 will allow for a Power6 processor book to be added to the machine without powering down the server. In the past,

Understanding your risk and controlling what you can is the best defense. No matter what the risk, this is sound advice. What are the risks in your IT department? Haphazard growth, lack of focus and coherent planning, and investment avoidance are just a few points that indicate a lack of interest in controlling risk. What can you do to have some control over risk?

Dealing with system recovery after your system has failed is the subject of a just-published white paper by SafeData, a Rhode Island-based business that hosts high availability and disaster recovery services offering managed services as

The weak greenback has been a boon of sorts to IT companies based in the United States that export a lot of hard and soft wares to foreign companies, but it is no fun at all for companies headquartered outside the United States that do a lot of business there. Such is the case with ERP software giant SAP, which last week said its net earnings took an 22 percent dive to €242 million on sales of €2.46 billion, actually up 14 percent, in the first quarter ended March 30.

SAP’s profits were hit not just by the dollar-euro

While plenty of IT firms are feeling the pinch in the past two quarters as they try to push products in the United States, this is not the case for all software companies. In fact, retail and supply chain management software maker JDA Software Group just finished the best first quarter of software license sales in its 30-year history. However, the company’s net earnings fell a tiny bit, and for once–and probably thanks to a lot of worse news out there–Wall Street seemed to take it in stride and cut JDA some slack.

In the first quarter ended March 31,