The first TPC-C online transaction processing benchmark tests are in for the new two-socket “Nehalem EP” Xeon 5500 processors from Intel, and as I suggested would be the case in last week’s coverage of that chip announcement, IBM had better get its fingers out of its ears and get to work goosing the two-socket and four-socket servers with some Power6+ chips, or be prepared to cut prices on the i 6.1 software stack to compete against Windows on these Nehalem machines.

The news is not, perhaps, as bad as it could be. First, let’s take a deep breath and

Well, so much for that idea. About a day after I wrote about the impending acquisition of Unix server maker Sun Microsystems by IBM for last week’s issue, the deal came apart. And why? Apparently–and we all have to say apparently out here because no one has said anything officially–because the two parties could not agree on money or the firmness of their commitments.

This seems to be a typical bad engagement gone worse before the nuptials are even exchanged. Which is when you want things to go bad, particularly if you are most Sun employees, people who want

While the IT press focuses on all the big merger and acquisition deals that are going on as the economy moves along at its sluggish pace, there are plenty of smaller deals going on as companies realize they are too small to go it alone and they meet up with other companies that want to acquire them for one reason or another. So it is with clone memory maker Dataram‘s acquisition last week of rival Micro Memory Bank, both of which are located in my neck of the woods.

Dataram is based in the suburbs outside of Princeton,

Currency fluctuations and a downturn in IT spending, particularly among manufacturing customers, combined to drive third quarter revenues down 18 percent to $174 million for Lawson Software, but cost cutting enabled the company to post a profit anyway. The St. Paul, Minnesota, ERP software vendor also announced a deal with a French Canadian reseller, Commsoft Technologies, to sell Lawson’s M3 suite, which is primarily implemented on i-based Power Systems machines.

Conventional wisdom says that during periods of macro economic uncertainty, such as we find ourselves in now, companies will put the brakes on big new ERP purchases and

A few weeks ago, I noticed that Tom Duncan was making a presentation about Management Central, a component of System i Navigator, at the The OMNI User meeting in Chicago. I was curious how the group responded to his topic because Management Central can be a little quirky. As it turned out, Duncan says, the topic was quite well received based on the amount of questions the audience had about Management Central.

Most people know about Management Central, but like a lot of things on the AS/400 and its successors, the familiarity varies from having simply heard about it to

TPM,

Why do you have to be so right and why does IBM have to generally ignore your insightful, thoughtful advice on how to compete?

ARGH!

Thank you for the wonderful writing you and your team produce. My simple words cannot show my appreciation enough.

Sincerely,

Ethan

Hi Ethan,

Thanks so much for your kind words about my team and what we do here at IT Jungle. And simple words do show appreciation. Some days, appreciation is the only force that keeps us going, since money surely is not enough. So don’t think I don’t appreciate your appreciation. (OK, this

Stick to your knitting. Keep your eye on the ball. These are phrases we use to remind us to not forget why we are in business in the first place, but they apply equally well to IT departments. It is easy to get distracted and seduced by new technologies; remember that whole dot-com thing and all the disruption it caused a decade ago? But it is important to not lose skills relating to the core IT systems at your company, which are often encapsulated in legacy applications and databases on IBM mainframe and midrange gear.

While COBOL application specialist Micro

The economic crunch is turning small and medium businesses into more savvy shoppers, as you might expect. So how are SMBs making their IT buying decisions these days?

According to research done by IDC, there is a good, old-fashioned way that is still popular: talking to people they trust about the technology they use in their organizations. Yup, despite all the good information that is available on the Internet–information that was largely unavailable 15 years ago, when the IT market was less complex–word of mouth is still a key part of the IT buying process for SMBs. But before

ACOM Solutions, which sells a content management program called EZContentManager for i platforms, has announced a value added reseller agreement with Standard Data Corporation, an IT company with a long history that makes the entire midrange look like a bunch of whippersnappers.

ACOM is, of course, familiar to the IBM midrange. The company’s flagship EZContentManager program may run on Windows, but it is aimed squarely at the i platform and the unique kinds of spool files and documents that the box creates, as well as the kinds of documents that end users generate on their PCs and often

The AS/400, with a little help from a company once known as JD Edwards, got a pretty early and strong toehold in the oil and gas industry, and thanks to IBM, Jack Henry, and a number of other application providers, established a pretty strong showing in international and regional banking. And with the economies of Eastern Europe, Russia, and other parts of the former Soviet Union growing at a pretty healthy clip for the past decade, it comes as no surprise that i platform sales have shown growth in this region of the globe.

And it is therefore no surprise