The entry and midrange server racket has a new processor in town, and its name is Nehalem, and it comes from Intel. And despite the poor global economy and despite the nay-sayers who think that people don’t think about processors and their features any more, the Nehalem chip is going to get traction this year and it is most certainly going to shake up the entry and midrange spaces where the Power Systems i platform plays.

Let’s play some Intel code-name bingo first, just because it is fun. Technically, the chip that Intel announced last week has Nehalem as

Well, Big Blue and Big Mouth seem to be getting closer to closing a deal that will see IBM acquire its archrival in servers and systems software and its partner in Java, Sun Microsystems. Perhaps more than any other acquisition in the history of the computer business, this one, should the talks stop and the deal unravel, marks a dramatic change in the IT landscape. And I don’t necessarily mean a good one.

Late last week, I heard a rumor from people a lot closer to the situation than myself that a deal could be announced as early as

IT analyst groups Gartner and Forrester Research last week released pessimistic reports predicting a decline of 3 to 4 percent in IT spending, both here and abroad, for 2009. Spending on servers and other pieces of hardware will be clobbered with a 15 percent decline, according to Gartner, which says the spending slowdown is exceeding the IT spending repercussions of dot-com bubble burst back in 2001.

According to Gartner’s forecast, global IT spending will total $3.2 trillion this year, a 3.8 percent decline from 2008, when IT spending reached $3.4 trillion. Hardware sales will plummet to just $324 billion this

A $200 million Airbus A340-600 commercial jet sits on the tarmac at the airport in Toulouse, France. The jet is new and has yet to ferry a single passenger. It has been towed to what is called the “run-up area,” where its Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies crew is performing an engine test. Having set the air brakes, the pilot instructs the flight computer to slowly increase power to all four engines. With the engines fully engaged and screaming under full lift-off power, a cockpit horn begins blaring, warning of impending takeoff. Annoyed, one of the crew pulls the circuit breaker

Companies need to pay attention to the software as a service (SaaS) option. For a lot of companies, it’s being dismissed as too early in the game, but you can’t ignore the young companies and the start-ups–possibly your future competitors–that are choosing SaaS and cloud computing for their IT strategy. Meanwhile the heavyweights of the IT business are attempting to devise some standards that make interoperability a priority while accusations fly about who is still carrying proprietary baggage and who has vendor lock-in as an ulterior motive.

Conversations leading up to the difficult decisions between SaaS and traditional off-the-shelf software

According to a new study from the Computing Research Association, you’re likely to hear a college-bound student say the words “coding is cool.” It’s been a while, but there are indicators now that back this up. For the first time in six years there is an enrollment increase in computer science classes.

This welcome news comes within weeks of a report conducted as a joint effort between IBM and the Marist Institute for Public Opinion that students are increasing their emphasis on technology skills before they graduate. That’s not necessarily an indicator of CompSci degree mania. It’s really

Hoping to scare up some business for its Power Systems platform and to get a little help from its independent software vendor partners, IBM last week extended a promotion on Power-based systems that has been running since March 2007 to cover more ISVs and more of their solutions.

Under this Software Solutions for Power Systems Rebate Offering, which was originally aimed at the System p (AIX and Linux) part of the house but which was expanded last September to include the i 6.1 operating system and applications from ISVs who sell i-based software, IBM offers rebates that range from as

High availability software provider Maximum Availability is continuing its expansion into the North American Power Systems i space, and last week announced a partnership with Network Services Plus to help it sell and support its solutions in the United States.

Maximum Availability is the Aukland, New Zealand, provider of the *noMAX suite of high availability and disaster recovery products for the i platform, which is used by hundreds of companies in over 40 countries. NSPI, which is based in the Roswell suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, has been around for 21 years and is a high-level partner with IBM, Microsoft

Descartes Systems Group–a global logistics solutions provider that specializes in hosted, transactional, and packaged solutions–has acquired privately held Scancode Systems, a developer and integrator of carrier-compliant parcel and less-than-truckload (LTL) shipping solutions. The acquisition brings additional services–as well as 500 new members–to the extensive Descartes Global Logistics Network.

The acquisition is the latest in a series that Descartes has strung together as it strives to build out its suite of products and its hosted services. Here’s a review of the past 18 months.

Beginning in August 2007, it acquired Global Freight Exchange, a U.K.-based company specializing in electronic

Last October, when IBM did the final and full convergence of the i and p platforms into a single Power Systems lineup with a single set of product numbers, the company said that it would be putting 2.5-inch disk drives into the field for its midrange Power 550 servers. These disks were originally supposed to ship on November 21, then were pushed out to April 24. Now, they will be shipped on May 22.

In its notice about the change in data for the 2.5-inch SAS drives for the Power 550, which you can read here, the company didn’t