Choose Wisely: High Availability Performance and Reliability Issues
by Dan Burger

How will your company deal with downtime? The same as it always has? Maintaining the status quo might be the goal for many companies, where not falling behind is considered getting ahead and business demands are not all that demanding. But that type of business operation simply will not fly for many companies. The speed of decision-making, coupled with e-business, has made terms such as high availability and managed availability commonplace in large enterprises, and increasingly in small and midsized businesses as well. READ MORE >

OS Solutions Relies on Remote Journaling for New HA Offering
by Alex Woodie

There's a new provider of iSeries high availability software in town. OS Solutions earlier this year introduced data replication and high availability capabilities to its flagship OS Director systems management product. Like most of the new high availability products to hit the market in recent years, this one relies on IBM's remote journaling technology. In addition to lowering the bar of entry for vendors, there's another benefit to remote journaling, OS Solutions says: it makes high availability affordable to customers. READ MORE >

Server Market Grows in the Third Quarter
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Gartner and IDC, which long ago became the two arbiters of market share and harbingers of doom (if you happen to be one of the vendors or architectures losing money), have announced their market share results for the third quarter. The good news is that the server market has once again shown some signs of life, which is encouraging for the IT market as a whole. Server shipments are booming, and even with big price cuts, revenues are growing a bit. READ MORE >

IDC Makes Its IT Prognostications for 2005
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

About this time of the year, everyone has had about enough and is looking forward to a fresh start in the new year. If you liked 2004 in the information technology market, then, according to dozens of analysts who track IT for IDC, you are going to like 2005. You see, 2005 will be like 2004--only more so. (That was a joke. Laugh now, because there are not many jokes in IT land these days.) READ MORE >

  But Wait, There's More

Look for the "Four Hundred 2005 Special Report" on December 15 . . . Computer Associates Taps Top IBM Software Exec As Its New CEO . . . JDE Shops Have Low Expectations for Oracle Acquisition, Says AMR . . . IBM, Fujitsu Agree on Autonomic Computing Standards . . . JDA Software Restructures to Cut Costs . . . Disk Array Market Is Up in the Third Quarter, Too . . . IBM Rumored to Be Selling Its PC Business . . . READ MORE >

Reader Feedback and Insights

In November readers of The Four Hundred newsletter responded to Timothy Prickett Morgan's article "Rotten to the Core: Chips, Lies, and Software Licenses," more COMMON attendees "sound off," and readers give kudos to the Guru newsletter and Joe Hertvik's "Admin Alert" column. READ MORE >