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From big iron to white boxes, Nationwide goes virtualFrom big iron to white boxes, Nationwide goes virtual While many IT shops see virtualization as a question of adopting EMC's VMware on servers running Windows or Linux, Nationwide Insurance has adopted the technology for both x86-based and mainframe-hosted servers. After all, notes Buzz Woeckener, the company's zLinux/Unix server manager, virtualization was invented for mainframes. On the road to the virtual desktop Click ‘n’ run. It seems like such a simple concept. Surf up to a Web page, select the desired application from a list, and click. Voila! Microsoft Word appears on your desktop. Or Excel, or Adobe Photoshop… you name it.  September 24, 3:00 a.m. PDT Herd behavior demonstrated at Demo "Whatever happened to working alone?” September 24, 3:00 a.m. PDT Credit Suisse plans virtualization a massive scale With 20,000 servers to manage, financial services powerhouse Credit Suisse had a long list of reasons to consider server virtualization: reducing the number of physical servers to manage, cutting power needs, improving software provisioning time, and deferring expensive datacenter buildouts. But it also needed a clear set of guidelines to determine when to virtualize, plus a clear set of procedures for managing a virtualization initiative. September 24, 3:00 a.m. PDT IBM switching its server datacenters to mainframes IBM is replacing 3,900 servers in its own datacenters with 30 mainframe computers to save energy and to show that the mainframe is still very much alive. August 1, 4:19 a.m. PDT APC instruments mark the rebirth of cool The tried and true methods of prepping a datacenter haven't changed much over the years. You find a massive air conditioner or three, bring in lots of juice, and make sure there aren't any sprinkler heads in the ceiling. But although this is the way it's always been done, APC is betting that it's not the way it will be done in the future -- except for the sprinkler heads. July 16, 3:00 a.m. PDT IBM pushes z9 mainframe for small business IBM unveiled a Web site and IT security software application Thursday as part of its effort to compete with Hewlett-Packard and Sun for customers in the fast-growing SMB sector. June 21, 11:58 a.m. PDT ANA still in the dark on reservation systems failure All Nippon Airways (ANA) still doesn't know the exact cause of a systems failure that hit its domestic operations on Sunday and caused the cancellation or delay of hundreds of flights. May 31, 4:58 a.m. PDT 3Leaf Systems: Scale up by scaling out 3Leaf Systems co-founder and CEO Bob Quinn is a betting man. A veteran of startups specializing in event-driven architectures, network processing, and scalable SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) systems, Quinn is now wagering that hardware and software technology will turn heaps of AMD and Intel x64 servers into virtualized "warehouses" of compute, memory, and I/O resources. May 11, 3:00 a.m. PDT Daylight-saving time a nuisance, but no Y2K Timed stock market trades will go awry. Manufacturing lines will grind to a halt. Perplexed executives will hold court before empty conference rooms. These are just a few of the doomsday scenarios that have been tossed out in advance of daylight-saving time, which has been bumped up by two weeks this year by order of the U.S. Congress. March 7, 8:30 a.m. PST IBM continues to simplify mainframe IBM Corp. is releasing more software to make it easier to program, manage and administer its mainframes in an ongoing bid to attract more customers to purchase its big iron hardware instead of high-end servers. February 13, 10:10 a.m. PST Hardware: Multicore rolls on For observers of the microprocessor sweepstakes, 2006 will be remembered as the year the empire struck back, the green CPU grew, multicore trickled down, Power shifted, a new public SPARC was lit, and an industry-altering merger put coprocessors, and AMD’s marketing, back in business. January 1, 3:00 a.m. PST IBM accuses mainframe company of patent infringement IBM Corp. says a Sunnyvale, California, company has infringed its patents by creating computers that allow customers to run IBM's System z operating systems and software on mainframes from other vendors. December 7, 1:51 p.m. PST How I became the IT boss by accident Back in the mid-’80s, I was the No. 2 guy in a small tech-support and implementation group, working out of the headquarters of a company with offices spread across the country. Mainframes still ruled back then, and microcomputers were snotty upstarts that “real” computer users sneered at. I found the little buggers fascinating -- and I really liked DOS. Those batch files were so cool... November 14, 3:00 a.m. PST IBM aims to boost mainframe sales with simplified management IBM is embarking on a five-year campaign to promote mainframe computers by making the systems easier to configure and operate, and to promote them as an alternative to server network computing. October 4, 12:28 p.m. PDT Sun sells mainframe re-hosting business Still looking to cut costs, struggling server maker Sun Microsystems has sold off its mainframe re-hosting business to Chicago's Clerity Solutions Inc. August 16, 5:42 p.m. PDT IBM positions mainframes for SOA IBM at the SHARE conference in Baltimore on Tuesday is previewing Tivoli management software for its System z mainframes that is intended to boost the platform's standing in SOA and Internet computing. August 15, 7:15 a.m. PDT Microsoft may have multicore price edge Microsoft Corp. could have an early advantage over competitors IBM Corp. and Oracle Corp. as some software companies begin shifting pricing to accommodate servers with multicore processors, analysts said. August 8, 1:43 p.m. PDT IBM updates bring SOA to mainframes See correction below May 15, 3:00 a.m. PDT Fabric7 promises high-end servers at low cost Server virtualization technologies are getting monstrous amounts of buzz because they encourage cost savings, permit greater deployment flexibility, and increase utilization rates. Today, most virtualization technologies focus on software implementations, but a fledgling server vendor called Fabric7 is taking a different, hardware-based approach. May 15, 3:00 a.m. PDT Product previews Sun Solaris 10 to integrate ZFS and PostgreSQL Sun announced a June release of the solaris 10 operating system that will incorporate ZFS 1.0, Sun’s new 128-bit file system, and the open source PostgreSQL database. ZFS automatically detects and corrects data corruption and eliminates the need for a volume manager. PostgreSQL will help leverage Solaris’ predictive self-healing, OS containers, and DTrace (dynamic tracing) technologies. Solaris 10, Sun Microsystems May 15, 3:00 a.m. PDT Tech junkies don’t want to hear that choice is bad I saw Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s new CEO, speak at a pre-recession trade conference. It wasn’t a conference to announce the recession, although Sun would have been the outfit to sponsor that shindig. Schwartz uttered three words that stuck in my head and which I’ll always associate with him: “Choice is bad.” May 10, 3:00 a.m. PDT IBM to offer mainframe for the midmarket IBM plans to sell a lower-cost version of its z9 mainframe computer aimed at midsize businesses and emerging markets such as China, the company announced Thursday. April 27, 6:13 a.m. PDT Update: McNealy steps aside as CEO of Sun Jonathan Schwartz has been the heir apparent of Scott McNealy's at Sun Microsystems Inc. for some time, but many had doubts when he took over as president and chief operating officer of the struggling vendor in 2004 that he was the right man for the job. April 24, 4:45 p.m. PDT The real downside of a Fortune 500 analyst job I graduated at the top of my class with a degree in IT and several appealing job offers. After scoping out my options, I signed on as a systems analyst at a manufacturing plant for a Fortune 500 company, where I was tasked with supporting a real-time production reporting system developed by the corporate IT staff. March 14, 3:00 a.m. PST HP weighs in further on data center heat issues Hewlett-Packard Co. announced three products Monday designed to help enterprise users deal with power management difficulties. The products, due to ship Feb. 6, include a water-cooled heat exchanger unit which can be attached to the side of a server rack. January 30, 11:01 a.m. PST High-performance computing: Supercharging the enterprise Merlin Securities, a new prime brokerage providing trading, financing, portfolio analysis, and reporting for multibillion-dollar hedge funds, needed a competitive edge. Its larger rivals, such as Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and UBS, had the advantage of expensive mainframes that could consolidate and analyze millions of trades each day and return reports via batch processing the next morning that measured performance on a monthly basis. So Merlin outclassed its competitors by returning trade performance information in near real time with performance measured on a daily basis and performance attribution on multiple levels, including in comparison to other securities in a market sector, numerous benchmarks, and other traders in the firm. What’s more, it did it using an inexpensive compute cluster made up of four dual-processor Dell PowerEdge 2850 servers. January 9, 3:00 a.m. PST Forrester index finds US tech sector healthy for now The U.S. technology industry has recovered from a recession of 2001 and 2002 and is about as healthy as it's been in three years, according to a new tech sector economic index released Monday. December 12, 9:49 a.m. PST Is it time to scrap your Big Iron? See correction at end of article November 17, 3:00 a.m. PST When mainframes make sense Not everyone sees the mainframe as a relic of the past. In 1996, motor manufacturer Baldor Electric, beguiled by promises of lower costs and the desire to move to the SAP platform for all its CRM and ERP transactions, left the mainframe in favor of a Windows environment. According to Mark Shackelford, Baldor's IS director, the company was very unhappy with the results. November 17, 3:00 a.m. PST Linux Networx shows off LS Series Hardware and clustering company Linux Networx Inc. unveiled its LS Series of Linux machines Monday. The Series contains two families, the midrange LS-1 Supersystem and the high-end LS/X supercomputer. November 14, 2:46 p.m. PST Sabre's customer-driven SOA How does a technology-driven company with massive performance and scalability requirements -- and incredibly varied customer and supplier bases -- transition to SOA? For Sabre Holdings, the answer was a lot of in-house development and a complex interweaving of the old and new. November 7, 3:00 a.m. PST Sprint rationalizes its infrastructure with SOA As far back as four years ago, Sprint’s IT staff was already headed toward SOA (service-oriented architecture). They just didn’t know it yet. September 12, 4:00 a.m. PDT IBM, users work to attract young mainframers IBM and independent user group Share are teaming up to provide support for young people interested in mainframe computing, the organizations announced Monday. The initiative and its associated community is being dubbed "zNextGen," a reference to IBM's zSeries mainframe brand. August 22, 8:18 a.m. PDT IBM opens up Portal to mainframes IBM is looking to broaden the reach of its WebSphere Portal. A recent upgrade made the 4-year-old software available for the first time on IBM's zSeries mainframe and iSeries midmarket servers, a move IBM hopes will spur customer interest in deploying portal software on platforms for which it has previously not been widely available. August 4, 10:56 a.m. PDT Dear IT graduate, just one word -- mainframes Imagine today's computer science students experiencing the kind of cocktail party thrown for Benjamin Braddock by his parents in the 1967 movie "The Graduate." As the students wonder about what the future may hold, various older figures sidle up with one-word suggestions about possible careers. "Java," "Linux" and "Internet" you'd expect to hear whispered, but "mainframes?" Not so much. August 3, 11:23 a.m. PDT IBM beefs up mainframe IBM took the wraps off its System z9 mainframe last week, the first in a new generation of machines focused on easing security and systems management. August 1, 5:00 a.m. PDT Update: IBM unveils new mainframe, talks up virtualization IBM unveiled its System z9 mainframe, the first in a new generation of machines focused on easing security and systems management, company executives said Tuesday. July 26, 12:41 p.m. PDT IBM's project financing attracting SMBs IBM's project financing service is proving popular not only among enterprises but also with the small to midsize business (SMB) sector, according to a Big Blue executive. The service provides a customer with complete financial backing from IBM for an entire IT project from the design phase to system deployment. July 20, 12:19 p.m. PDT IBM increases supercomputer dominance IBM's supercomputers continue to be the fastest in the world, according to the latest Top500 list of the speediest machines released Wednesday. The company snagged six of the top 10 spots, including the coveted number one and two placings while widening the performance gap between its machines and those of its competitors. June 22, 5:01 a.m. PDT IBM worker's day of action off to a slow start A worldwide day of action by IBM workers and unions in protest over the company's planned job cuts got off to a slow start with no reported action at company facilities in Asia-Pacific as of late morning. May 23, 4:04 a.m. PDT Public Windows Server 2003 R2 beta set for next week Microsoft next week plans to publicly release the second beta test version of Windows Server 2003 R2, an update to Windows Server that the company expects to ship in the fourth quarter of this year. April 21, 3:55 p.m. PDT Update: IBM shows Q1 growth but falls short of forecasts IBM said its first-quarter earnings were $0.85 per share, below the $0.90 per share consensus forecast of analysts polled by Thomson First Call. Net income was $1.4 billion, on revenue of $22.9 billion, both up 3 percent from last year's first quarter. Analysts were expecting revenue of $23.6 billion. April 14, 4:54 p.m. PDT Microsoft will reap the spoils of the AMD-Intel chip wars It's like two big dogs fighting over a bone while a little dog sits by watching as it happily gnaws on the prize. Of course, in this case, the little dog is actually just as big as the other two, if not bigger, and the bone really isn't just one bone; it's … hell, I'm no good at similes. March 4, 3:00 p.m. PST Whatever happened to yesterday's hot technologies? Remember push technology? Or virtual reality for the Web? Or Microsoft Bob? Some ideas are probably better left consigned to history. And yet the roadside of the information superhighway is littered with ideas that sounded promising but never quite made it to revolution status before dropping off IT’s radar. February 25, 3:00 p.m. PST HP's customers can count on calls from Dell, IBM Transitional periods at IT companies are usually followed by fervent attempts on the part of that company's competitors to take advantage of the situation with jump in sales calls, promotions, and media spin. Hewlett-Packard's (HP's) customers can expect all three in the wake of Carly Fiorina's departure Wednesday, analysts said. February 9, 5:06 p.m. PST Microsoft readies BizTalk Server upgrades Microsoft by mid-2006 plans to release a new version of its BizTalk Server business integration software, offering support for SQL Server 2005 and simplified management, among other features. January 14, 3:17 p.m. PST EBay initiative promotes electronics recycling LAS VEGAS - Ebay has brought together several technology industry heavyweights in an initiative to promote recycling of old computers and other consumer electronics hardware. The move also is an attempt by the industry to pre-empt further electronic waste legislation. January 6, 1:07 p.m. PST Startup takes new approach to server virtualization A little-known, Boston-area startup is beta-testing technology designed to let users quickly configure "virtual" multiprocessor systems out of inexpensive PC machines. Called Katana Technology, the 30-person company has not yet revealed details of its upcoming product, but appears to have developed a novel approach to consolidating data center resources. December 15, 11:22 a.m. PST IBM, others push for greater U.S. innovation The U.S. needs to overhaul its education system to encourage innovation and focus more federal funding on high-risk research to maintain a competitive edge over other nations, according to a report endorsed by leading U.S. companies and universities. December 15, 11:13 a.m. PST Project shows business side of grid SAN FRANCISCO - Hoping to prove that grid computing can work in the business world, Dell, EMC, Intel and Oracle on Tuesday announced a joint effort designed to show business users how to use the distributed computing technology. December 7, 5:08 p.m. PST CA updates Unicenter offerings Computer Associates Monday announced the general availability of three Unicenter performance management products for mainframe data management. December 6, 8:41 a.m. PST Update: HP server group sees profit in Q4 HP's net earnings for its fourth fiscal quarter, which included $136 million in after-tax adjustments, were $1.2 billion, or $0.41 per share. This exceeded analyst expectations of $0.37 per share compiled by Thomson First Call. HP's total revenues were also slightly ahead of Thomson's estimates, which had been $21.1 billion, according to a survey of 18 financial analysts. November 16, 5:05 p.m. PST Update: IBM posts broad Q3 revenue growth IBM Corp. posted quarterly results on Monday showing 9 percent revenue growth from last year and slight earnings growth, despite a $320 million charge it took during the quarter to settle some claims in a lawsuit over its pension plan. October 18, 5:45 p.m. PDT IBM renews vows to mainframe IBM shored up commitment to its mainframe computing platform Thursday with a series of new technologies, investments in emerging markets, new industry-focused solutions, and new partnerships. October 7, 12:01 p.m. PDT CA offers usage-based pricing for mainframe tools Computer Associates International Inc. (CA) introduced a usage-based pricing and licensing option for its mainframe management products on Thursday, aligning its offerings with IBM Corp.'s On Demand model. October 7, 5:40 a.m. PDT The six myths of IT Time to face reality. Some of our bedrock assumptions turn out to be unfounded. And chief technologists can be subject to outdated beliefs as often as any professional. With that in mind, we addressed six common IT myths and deconstructed them to give managers a clear view of some important assumptions that might otherwise throw a monkey wrench into their technology plans. August 13, 3:00 p.m. PDT Update: HP fires Blackmore, other sales executives Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) fired three major sales executives Thursday, including former server group head Peter Blackmore, in a management shakeup following a disappointing quarter for HP's server division. August 12, 1:15 p.m. PDT IBM lands European Linux mainframe deal IBM Corp. claimed one of the largest European deployments of Linux on the mainframe on Wednesday, adding that it was testimony to the continuing vitality of its mainframe business. August 11, 7:51 a.m. PDT Sun shows profit in preliminary earnings report Sun Microsystems Inc. on Tuesday reported a profit of $795 million or $0.24 per share in the fourth quarter, compared with a loss of $1.039 billion or $0.32 per share in the same quarter of last year. July 21, 4:51 a.m. PDT Unix leap of faith Unix servers are making strides even if they aren’t making a whole lot of noise. But those of us who are listening closely and willing to take calculated risks can beat the rush. July 16, 3:00 p.m. PDT Update: IBM posts strong profit, shows slow software growth IBM Corp. comfortably met analysts' earnings expectations for its second quarter but fell slightly short on revenue, suggesting that it, too, is feeling the effects of postponed spending. After a rash of earnings warnings from software vendors, investors were looking to Big Blue for reassurance about the sector's strength -- but while IBM's hardware and services businesses grew, its software group's revenue was essentially flat from last year, the company announced Thursday. July 16, 4:31 a.m. PDT IBM leads shifting apps deployment market, IDC says IBM Corp. continued to lead the market for application deployment software in 2003, but the field will become far more competitive as customers migrate away from IBM's mainframe and OS/400 systems, according to new figures released Tuesday by IDC. June 29, 12:13 p.m. PDT Apple adds HPC customer but falls from Top500 Apple Computer Inc. took a step forward and a step backward Monday in its quest to prove itself a viable player in the world of high performance computing (HPC). June 22, 5:32 a.m. PDT IBM rising, Apple out of latest supercomputer ranking The Japan Marine Science and Technology Center's Earth Simulator remains the world's most powerful computer, according to the latest version of an industry ranking, but for the first time a serious competitor has made an appearance. June 21, 4:37 a.m. PDT Sun, Fujitsu to merge Sparc server products Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu plan to combine their Sparc-based server product lines by 2006, expanding a long-standing partnership between the two companies. June 4, 3:00 p.m. PDT Server sales rise as users rebuild Worldwide sales of server hardware reached $11.5 billion in the first quarter of 2004, according to research firm IDC. This represented 7.3 percent growth over the same period last year, and marks the fourth consecutive quarter of overall growth in the server market. May 28, 4:37 a.m. PDT Report: IBM tightens hold on databases IBM tightened its grip on the RDBMS (relational database management system) market just a little more in 2003, largely on the strength of versions of DB2 that run on its iSeries midrange servers and zSeries mainframes, according to a report released by Gartner's Dataquest division on Wednesday. May 26, 2:00 p.m. PDT IBM envisions virtualization IBM is prepping its VE (Virtualization Engine) to allow servers to be partitioned like mainframes, enabling them to run as many as 10 services on a single processor. April 30, 3:00 p.m. PDT IBM opens European supercomputer on-demand center DÜSSELDORF, GERMANY - To meet growing demand for supercomputing services, IBM Corp. opened a new high-capacity center in Europe on Friday -- its second such center and first outside the U.S. April 30, 11:55 a.m. PDT IBM unveils virtualization technology IBM's Systems and Technology Group has introduced its Virtualization Engine, which allows a Unix-based system to be partitioned just like a mainframe, enabling it to run as many as 10 servers per processor. April 28, 3:00 a.m. PDT Update: Sun posts $760 million loss, shuffles hardware units Sun Microsystems Inc. on Thursday reported a net loss of $760 million, or $0.23 per share, in the third quarter of its fiscal 2004 year, which ended March 28. The company also announced a reorganization of its hardware divisions, as well as the departure of two senior executives: Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer Mark Tolliver and Executive Vice President of Volume Systems Products Neil Knox. April 16, 4:41 a.m. PDT The mainframe also rises Big Blue celebrated the 40th anniversary of its first mainframe by unveiling a lower-cost version of its flagship e-Server zSeries z990 mainframe. April 9, 3:00 p.m. PDT Microsoft, Micro Focus team up for mainframe migration alliance In a week fraught with mainframe-related news, Microsoft and Micro Focus are the latest companies to join the ruckus. April 8, 10:52 a.m. PDT Windows, Linux thin client launched As industry talk swirls around Linux desktops versus Windows desktops, Neoware, a leading provider of thin clients, unveiled this week a $199 appliance that runs both. April 7, 11:00 a.m. PDT Update: The mainframe also rises IBM celebrated the 40th anniversary of its first mainframe on Wednesday with the unveiling of a lower cost version of its flagship e-Server zSeries z990 mainframe that it will target at mid-size companies. April 7, 8:10 a.m. PDT IBM seeks to push Power chip into new markets NEW YORK - IBM Corp. on Wednesday made a raft of product and partnership announcements intended to help push its Power microprocessor beyond servers to an array of corporate and consumer devices. March 31, 1:45 p.m. PST Unisys offers pay-per-use mainframe Unisys Corp. on Monday introduced a new line of its ClearPath mainframe servers, one of which will be available with a pay-per-use pricing model that will save customers between 20 and 30 percent on the cost of their big iron, according to the company. March 30, 4:25 a.m. PST IBM to promote Power processors at event IBM will provide news and an update to the business strategy behind its Power line of microprocessors at a press event in New York on Wednesday. As part of the event, the company is expected to provide details on the Power5 microprocessor that will form the basis of its next line of eServer pSeries Unix systems, code-named Squadron. March 26, 4:56 p.m. PST Is it time to retire big iron? Charles Fitzgerald, Microsoft’s general manager of platform strategies, insists that he has no ax to grind about big iron. But over the past year, he says, “we’ve had a whole bunch of customers come to us and say, ‘What can you do to help us get off the mainframe?’” March 26, 3:00 p.m. PST > Hardware > Server hardware > Platforms > Server hardware |
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