Gartner's still keeping its eye on the i
By Seamus Quinn
IT analyst Gartner says that worldwide Power i server
revenues were down 31.5% to just over $180 million in the first quarter
of 2009.
In the last issue of iNEWSWire UK, we reported rival analyst
IDC's estimate that first quarter Power i revenues were down 44% in
EMEA
from the same period a year ago. According to Gartner, revenue for i
OS-powered hardware in EMEA was actually only down 28% compared to the
same period last year, although the platform also dipped by 16.7% in
the
first quarter of 2008. Within those figures, the analyst says that
sales
of older "legacy" System i hardware have nearly dropped off the radar
with a 90.8% decline in Q4, 2008 and 89% in Q1, 2009.
UK-based Gartner senior analyst Errol Rasit is keen to stress that
contrary to previous reports in this newsletter and others, his firm is
still keeping a close eye on the i.
"As a part of our quarterly statistics definitions we still continue
to publish an IBM i number, or i5 or AS/400 or whatever you want to
call
them these days," he says. "Our research has been continuous so we've
tracked the migration of the i business from the legacy System i, as
IBM
would refer to it, to the new Power Systems."
Read
more...
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Power i skills still in demand despite recession
By Seamus Quinn
Even at a time of rising unemployment, Power i pros
with sharp enough skills can find new jobs, says a midrange recruitment
specialist.
While the recession means that he is seeing less demand, Computer Futures' Andrew
Nitek
says: "There is still a market out there. Recently, there were a couple
of companies that went into administration like [Woolworths'
distribution arm] Entertainment UK. They were a big AS/400 site but all
the staff found new jobs, pretty much. It shows that there are
opportunities."
Computer Futures is one of the very few big IT recruitment firms to
still have an IBM i division and has been finding positions for
midrange
job hunters for 20 years. Nitek says that i-oriented jobs tend to come
up through staff turnover more than anything else. There are also
opportunities created when UK firms bring offshore IT operations back
home. He describes developer and technical consultant roles as at the
more "dynamic" end of the market along with skills in insurance
applications, System 21, Synon and JD Edwards.
"Those guys would tend to pick up jobs," says Nitek. "While they
won't get millions of openings, what you tend to find is that there
won't be that much competition and because they've been specialising in
a niche area for so long they tend to be quite well regarded."
Read
more...
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New solutions:
Power i powerhouse updates modernisation and querying
tools
By Seamus Quinn
Power i software powerhouse Business Computer Design
(BCD) has enhanced a number of
the components that make up its BCD Modernisation Suite. UK distributor
is Softlanding
Europe.
BCD's web development tool WebSmart 8 now includes XML functions
that
simplify document processing and parsing. Its WebSmart PHP variant's
built-in change management functions now have added support for FTP
paths, making it easier to organise and publish website content.
The upcoming version of BCD's Nexus Portal will include a Google
Search Appliance portlet. The minimum OS release required to run
Presto,
BCD's rapid green-screen to web tool, is now V5R1 instead of V5R4.
There
is now an option to run Presto without installing the WebSphere
Application Server for all the OS levels it supports.
Read
more...
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