No, you are not having flashbacks, but retail and supply chain software vendor JDA Software said last Thursday that it was acquiring sometimes rival i2 Technologies for what works out to around $396 million. This is the second time that JDA has tried to acquire i2, and ironically, given the weakened state of the global economy, this is a lot more money than JDA was willing to pay in August 2008 when it made its first offer.

Back then, JDA sought to acquire i2, one of the innovators in the supply chain management software market, to bolster its presence

Public companies sure give the appearance of telling you lots of things about their business, but they rarely cough up any specific information about what it is selling, how much it is selling, and why. But, as companies go, IBM has some of the most detailed information available about its many products lines and businesses. Which is a good thing. But actual hard information is still lacking in many cases.

Which is why I have to go through the trouble of trying to convert IBM’s somewhat limited server, storage, and chip sales results, in terms of percent change, into actual

I have been a bit surprised by the lack of public wheeling and dealing in this economic downturn as far as server sales go. There has been no “cash for clunkers” equivalent deal that IBM has used to try to get companies to move ahead. Perhaps there are deals going on behind the scenes, on a one-on-one basis, but this takes time and is an inefficient way of selling because sales reps and channel partners end up doing what they want to move gear.

For all I know, IBM is so content with the price/performance of the Power Systems line,

How kindly the new year will treat IT professionals depends on the elusive recovery. But did we have one or didn’t we? Unlike experiencing a migraine, you can actually be in the middle of a recovery and apparently not even know it. Just ask the 15.7 million people looking for work, and the millions more who stopped looking. A jobless recovery they’re calling it, which is like a joyless orgasm. Whoop-tee-do.

The term “jobless recovery” is a telling oxymoron. It is a measure of the contempt in which the elites hold the rest of us. Once the banks and brokerage

While it is true that companies have sharply curtailed spending on IT during the recession, top financial executives still view IT as a strategic investment for obtaining a competitive advantage, according to a study of CFOs commissioned by Micro Focus. The study, released last week, found the recession has focused companies’ efforts more on improving existing systems than implementing new ones, and has brought the side benefit of boosting collaboration between management and the IT department.

There is no sugar-coating the huge impact that the recession has had on overall IT spending. The server business–the most visible part of

A good start is great, but it’s follow through that buys the bacon. When Business Computer Design, better known simply as BCD, joined the iManifest U.S. membership last week, I asked Eric Figura, director of sales and marketing at BCD, how iManifest compares to programs IBM has attempted in the past.

Although we were talking on the phone, I could imagine his head shaking as he said, “iManifest is a commitment to marketing our platform that has been gone for some time at IBM.”

There was a time when IBM had a good track record, Figura recalled. The company

COMMON is back in business in Africa. It’s been 14 years since the world’s largest user group dedicated to the IBM Power System platform (at that time referred to as the AS/400) had an organized presence on the continent. Tuesday, a new chapter will be written as COMMON Africa is re-launched along with a new branch of the Young i Professionals (YiPs).

Marking the occasion will be a meeting at the IBM offices in Sandton, a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa. Sandton is the financial center of South Africa, which makes it a magnet for IBM i computing. Wherever financial

You might be thinking that IBM doesn’t make PCs or workstations any more, after selling off that business to Lenovo a few years back. But there is still one workstation you can get from IBM, and for many i shops, it is a necessary part of the day-to-day running of their System i and Power Systems i boxes: the Hardware Management Console, or HMC for short. IBM has a new rack-mounted workstation that it has packaged up as a better, stronger, faster–and more expensive–HMC.

The new HMC, which goes by the product number 7042-CR5, is a workstation based on Intel’s

Banking software and hardware provider Jack Henry and Associates closed out its first quarter of fiscal 2010 in September, and it managed to boost profits while holding revenues steady–a neat trick given how much of a mess the banking industry has been in for the past year.

For the quarter ended September 30, the company posted sales of $182.3 million, down a smidgen from the year ago quarter, while net income rose 17 percent to $26.3 million. Software license sales at Jack Henry, as at most software makers these days, fell in the quarter, in this case by 14 percent,

The lawyers at the Department of Justice and G-men at the FBI have sure been busy in the past three weeks. Last week, yet another insider trading scandal erupted in New York. This time another 14 people, including hedge fund managers, lawyers, and an analyst at Moody’s Investor Service have been charged with participating in an insider trading ring that has allowed yet another group of people to profit to the tune of $20 million.

The initial insider trading scam, which centered around the Galleon Group and New Castle Group hedge funds, came to light when six people were arrested