I think IBM might be coming around to the idea, however belatedly, that its pricing on the i 6.1 and i 7.1 software stacks is a bit too pricey for midrange and enterprise shops to handle. It has taken some time and IBM is not admitting this by coming right out and cutting its prices. But the company has been chipping away at systems software prices here and there and is now allowing customers to transfer operating system licenses if they move up to Power7 iron, and in some cases, if they move to Power6 or Power6+ iron, too.

The

Sometimes, I feel like I must have fallen asleep under an apple tree for a long time and what I thought was real and important was perhaps one of many dreams I had while I was sleeping. So it is with the Notes/Domino messaging, groupware, and application serving platform for the Power Systems lineup. Be honest. When was the last time you heard IBM talk about Notes/Domino on the i? Me neither.

I can remember, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the Notes/Domino stack was first running natively on OS/400 and the box had a lot more scalability

I am not an insider at IBM nor one of the big IT consultancies that get help from Big Blue as they build their economic models of the server business each quarter when the system makers close out their successive quarters. For several years, I have built a model of IBM’s sales of mainframe, Power, and X64 server sales, and as the years go on, deviations in my model (which by necessity are not as solid as IBM’s own numbers) have made it diverge from IBM’s quarterly numbers. I am going to have to start from scratch and build a

Back to school? Already? Didn’t the kids just get out of school? Yes, yes, yes. But you sure can’t tell by the computer business, which has turned its calendar ahead. Corporate computer suppliers are chasing opportunities that formerly fell to consumers’ favorite vendors. Redefined laptops and desktops are spilling out far beyond the campus market; office computers are getting makeovers, too. Why should a corporate applications specialist care? Because new-fangled computers can louse up Webs, break intranets, confuse applications suites . . . and hide their mischief from developers.

The problems are the byproduct of progress. What’s new and generally

The third-party support war–more of a skirmish now–between software giants SAP and Oracle continues to grind on, and last week, Oracle gained a few yards of turf. The new top brass at the German software company said in a pretrial filing in the Oracle vs. SAP lawsuit that was filed in March of 2007 that it would accept financial responsibility for any judgment against its former TomorrowNow unit.

TomorrowNow, you will remember, was established by some ex-PeopleSoft employees to provide third-party support for PeopleSoft applications, which was eventually expanded to cover Siebel Systems and JD Edwards software suites. Being a

Big Blue has never had much of a stomach for doing big acquisitions, but it sure does like to make a lot of little ones to beef up its software and services portfolio and to give its hardware some more code to run. And so IBM has shelled out an undisclosed sum to acquire Storwize, a maker of data compression appliances that front-end network storage and databases.

Storwize was founded in 2004 by Gal Naor, the company’s president and a former member of the Israeli intelligence force and an executive at ECtel, a Singapore telecom services company, and Jonathan

Motivated students can learn in almost any environment. I mean, if you want to take RPG, its multiple database connectivity, and the IBM Power Systems hardware running the i operating system to a level that’s on par with any other business computing system, you could probably do that in a cave. But that would be so Neanderthal. Facilities do have a bearing on learning. And that’s why Bob Cozzi has scheduled his next RPG World conference at the Q Center in suburban Chicago.

This is a first-class facility. It’s specifically set up for training–a high tech, distraction-free environment. Cozzi describes

If it were not for a $246 million settlement in a Texas lawsuit relating to i2 Technologies prior to its acquisition by JDA Software, the retailing and supply software specialist would probably be popping champagne corks all over the boardroom in Scottsdale, Arizona. OK, maybe getting a few six packs of good beer, since sales were up but profits were not because of rising development costs and restructurings relating to the i2 acquisition.

In the second quarter, JDA’s overall revenues were up 59.2 percent, to $158.4 million, but $9.9 million in amortization of intangibles and $4.5 million in restructuring

Magic Software has had a tough go of it the last few years. But with its second quarter results, in which it boosted total revenues by a whopping 58 percent, the company could be in the midst of a rebound.

Magic reported total revenues of $21.5 million for the quarter, a $7.9 million boost over the $13.6 million it reported for the second quarter of fiscal 2009. It was the strongest second quarter Magic has had in some time, including the boom years of 2007 and 2008, when the company reported revenues $14.3 million and $16.0 million, respectively.

Profitability also

While The Four Hundred was on hiatus last week, IBM announced some pretty deep discounting on various networking products commonly used with its System x products, which are popular among the Power Systems base as well.

The deal, in announcement letter 310-229, applies to five different Ethernet switches resold by IBM. Under that deal, if you buy through IBM’s Web site or over the telephone, you get 30 percent shaved off the price. That is as good as most midrange shops were going to be able to negotiate on their own. Presumably IBM has some inventory it wants to