Jason Yow

Some industry observers still like to kick dents in the mainframe saying it's not the corporate platform of the future but the Big Iron seemingly takes the licks and keeps on ticking. Only IBM mainframe users were included in the survey population, IDC noted. Case in point: According to a study out today of 300 end users by researchers at IDC nearly one-half of said they plan to increase annual spending on mainframe hardware and software over the next five years. Network World Extra: How to really bury a mainframe Many mainframe users reported that they can plan another wave of investments in the System z platform over the next 2–5 years, citing the system's high availability, reliability, and security for mission-critical applications as major drivers, IDC stated. "Customers continue to collect dividends on their System z investments, which makes future investments much more palatable, even in difficult economic times," said Tim Grieser, program vice president, Enterprise System Management Software in a release.

IBM has engaged in some price cutting to make some of these processors more palatable though. The study says IBM's strategy of building specialty processors for the mainframe, such as the Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) for ERP and CRM transactions and z Application Assist Processor (zAAP) processors for Java and XML transactions are key to ongoing success of the platform. According to a Network World article IBM has cut in half prices for some specialty Linux processors. Another source said the price changed from $90,000 to $47,500 for IFLs running on the System z Business Class mainframe. IBM acknowledged "new pricing" for the IFL processors, but did not offer specific numbers.

And IBM's mainframes haven't been immune to the economic downturn. Still all is by no means rosy in mainframeland. This summer IBM reported that System z mainframe server revenue decreased 39% year-over-year in the second quarter, while overall company revenue declined 13%. IDC however says the mainframe will benefit down the road from these new processors which will require additional mainframe-related database and storage facilities to handle new workloads. Another recent study raised an ever-increasing issue – retiring mainframers. However, while today individuals still train to become commercial pilots, the number of IT professionals going into the mainframe arena is fast disappearing.

One study by system vendor Shoden found that 96% of respondents working for financial businesses said that they are concerned to some degree that with cloud computing and SaaS they will not be able to retain the necessary skills to operate and maintain legacy environments such as IBM mainframe or AS/400. The study said in the manufacturing sector, 88% of IT decision makers admitting to being concerned, while across all the markets polled, the average comes in at a staggering 83%. The retail, distribution and transport sectors come in just a little lower at 80%. The study went on to state that mainframe technology is as old as the Boeing 747 and, like the iconic aircraft, it is still the default workhorse for many of its original adopters. A similar study funded by CA found that Financial Services organizations are leading the drive to tackle the shortage of mainframe skills in Europe where 60% of financial service firms use the mainframe for administering their critical data. In the CA study it found 57% of financial services organizations said an easy-to-use Web-enabled GUI would help close the skills gap.

Fund Formed for Chinese Start-ups BEIJING - Kai-Fu Lee, who resigned as president of Google Inc.'s China operation earlier this month, has founded an angel investment fund and plans to help out three to five new Chinese high-tech companies annually. Steve Chen, a co-founder of YouTube Inc., is also an investor in Innovation Works. The fund, dubbed Innovation Works, launched with some $115 million (U.S.) provided by several IT vendors, including Taipei-based Foxconn Electronics Inc. and Lenovo Group Ltd. The new company said the funds will be used to train young entrepreneurs and help them build Internet, mobile Internet and cloud computing companies. - Owen Fletcher, IDG News Service Telecom Firms Plan Joint Venture LONDON - Deutsche Telekom AG and France Telecom SA plan to form a joint venture that would oversee their respective U.K. mobile communications networks - T-Mobile U.K. and Orange U.K. The combined company would have about 28.4 million customers, or 37% of U.K. mobile subscribers, leapfrogging current market leader O2 U.K. Ltd., which reported 20.7 million customers at the end of June, the companies said.

Ombudsman P. Nikiforos Diamandouros said he will rule on the complaint later this month. - Agam Shah, IDG News Service The venture is expected to realize overall savings of more than £3.5 billion ($5.7 billion U.S.) by, among other things, closing some stores and "optimizing" the companies' customer service staffs. - Peter Sayer, IDG News Service Briefly Noted The European Union has confirmed that its ombudsman received a complaint from Intel Corp. in July alleging that "procedural errors" were made by the European Commission during an antitrust investigation that led to a record fine of €1.06 billion ($1.44 billion U.S.) against the chip maker.

Nortel enterprise customers will be able to buy the company's current line of products for 12 to 18 months after Avaya officially takes ownership of Nortel's enterprise division that it won at auction for $900 million. Support for Nortel gear will continue throughout that transition, an Avaya spokesperson says. Slideshow: The rise and fall of Nortel    After that period, Avaya says it will have a migration path laid out that customers can follow to bring themselves into Avaya's official product line.

Because the two companies' products overlap, some analysts think the deal was more about customers than it was technology. Regardless of the migration path, Avaya says it will honor three- to five-year product support for all customers. Task forces from both companies will be tapped to figure out what products make the most sense to keep and which ones need to be merged. The company says the product road map for the expanded Avaya will be ready 30 days after the deal is officially closed. The contracts in question extended to Verizon customers through its services business. Avaya says it will honor all Nortel's service contracts including those that Verizon claimed in a legal filing would be canceled.

Verizon sought last week to get Avaya removed from the auction for Nortel's enterprise division. The customers will receive service," an Avaya spokesperson says. The last-minute appeal claimed Avaya intended to toss out the contracts and that would result in national security issues because some of the gear was supplied to critical governmental agencies. "We intend to fulfill the contract that is the subject of their filing. Long term Avaya says it will rely on its Aura Session Manager platform to unify customers' Session Initiation Protocol-based communications gear into a single system. Because Avaya Aura is compatible with Nortel's open architecture, customers will be able to build multi-vendor environments without requiring a swap-out to all-Avaya equipment.

Aura already supports Nortel gear as well as products from major VoIP vendors Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Mitel, NEC, Nortel, ShoreTel and Siemens. As for R&D, Avaya says the Nortel and Avaya resources are complementary enough to help the combined company bring new products to market more quickly.

Avid Technology has introduced new versions of its Media Composer, Symphony, and NewsCutter professional editing software, and Interplay, its production asset management system. Overall, these updates let users mix and match different frame rates and resolutions in a timeline within the same project, expand native support for file-based media with additional formats, and extend workgroup capabilities to Wide Area Networks.

Media Composer 4.0, Symphony 4.0, and NewsCutter 8.0 software offer an array of new features, according to the company. These include:

• Improved Stereoscopic 3-D editing to let customers view 3-D material side by side in addition to over and under. This ensures greater editing accuracy and a wider choice of monitors for viewing.
• Monitoring HD and SD cross-and-down converted formats from 1080p24 masters, which lets customers using Mojo DX or Nitris DX hardware view HD material on an SD monitor.
• Panasonic AVC-I encoding support, which allows customers to deliver final masters in Panasonic's AVC-I format while working natively in the Avid editing system from start to finish.
• Mac support for Pro Tools Video Satellite, which lets customers work on a Mac or PC when using Media Composer as a video satellite with Pro Tools systems.
• Mix and match capabilities let customers use media sources of different frame rates and resolutions (SD and HD) in the same timeline, eliminating external transcoding and time-consuming frame-rate conversions.
• Avid Media Access (AMA) enhancements offer native support for the popular Ikegami GFCAM 100 mb/s format. Customers can now directly access GFCAM media, including full metadata, and begin work immediately without transcoding, copying, or re-wrapping the material.
• New production suite updates include new versions of Boris Continuum Complete, Sorenson Squeeze, and SmartSound SonicFire Pro.

Interplay 2.0 lets broadcasters and post facilities work remotely. Lower bandwidth streaming proxies let Interplay workgroup members work with media anytime from anywhere, using a Mac or PC with a 1Mb/s Internet connection. Highlights of the new asset management software include the following:

• WAN workflow with Interplay Access that lets journalists, producers, and editors remotely search and work with media assets across multiple workgroups. A new streamlined interface allows users to browse, log and shot list media in three viewing modes, via a single screen, and toggle between views.
• Final Cut Pro workflow support offers check-in and check-out of FCP media with project links as well as media and metadata conversion of FCP-to-Avid and Avid-to-FCP projects.
• Interplay Delivery improvement offers a one-step transfer of materials such as subclips and shot lists.
• Interplay Transcode, with new mixdown capability, lets users mixdown full audio and video sequences while transcoding to a specified output format, simplifying processes such as archiving or publishing to mobile, Web, or digital signage formats.

Interplay 2.0 will be available on September 16. Media Composer 4.0, Symphony 4.0, and NewsCutter 8.0 systems will be available on September 30. Media Composer is $295 for educational institutions and students. Beginning September 30, students with academic versions of Media Composer (versions 3.5 through 4.0 purchased on or after March 1, 2009) will qualify for complementary upgrades for four years from the date of activation.