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The article reports on the move of International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) to reduce the size and cost of some of their System z systems in the U.S. The company introduced System z10 Business Class mainframe, a lower-cost and smaller version of the full-size. It is the second attempt of the company to offer a lower-cost mainframe to attract customers to Big Blue's signature computer system. The mainframe system is claimed to be an attractive offer for those smaller enterprises and midmarket companies seeking to integrate Linux workloads running on multiple x86 systems.

The article reports on how content-addressed storage (CAS) systems can help information technology managers bring their organizations into compliance with regulatory mandates. CAS is an intelligent repository used to store and preserve compliance-sensitive documents such as medical records, blueprints, invoices and e-mail messages. Each piece of data that is fed into CAS are being stored using identifiers, which ensures that sensitive business content is not altered and that the paper trail is preserved within the context of a paperless environment. It also has the ability to perform high-speed searches through the repository.

Presents several letters to the editor related to the computer industry. Information on reports released by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, on the agency's inability to audit its information technology activity logs to detect unauthorized use or potential security threats; Advantages of combining software for Adobe Acrobat Reader and a Flash player; Significance of 64-bit computer systems.

The article reflects on the development of the Web 2.0 bubble that analysts fear for another technology bubble burst. The author explains that all this talk about bubbles lets him think about the classic cycles of busts. He states that same progression from pure technology to pure marketing can be seen, when past technology bubbles are analyzed. Thus, he suggests to pay attention to the progression, to be able to tell when a bubble is getting big enough for its own good and will likely burst.

The article reports on the introduction of a value-added strategy that will greatly increase the reach and accessibility of the company’s award-winning column product, "Tech Directions," by Jim Rapoza Columns Inc., a leading producer of technology opinion and analysis. Jim Rapoza will be the first vendor of technology-oriented columns to apply time-tested software extension techniques to the production of opinion column. The company is expecting that hundreds of hobbyist columnists will rush to add functionality to the Tech Directions product.

The article reports developments related to computer software industry. Sun Microsystems Inc., AMD Corp., and other companies are teaming with the Environmental Protection Agency to cook up an Energy Star rating for the server. Information technology managers will theoretically be better able to plug energy consumption into their ROI equations. The foundation of information lifecycle management is differentiating the many flavors of data at the enterprise and matching each to the proper stripe of storage.

The article reports on the results of the 2006 CIO Insight IT Spending Survey conducted by the CIO Insight that will show the increasing information technology spending. According to the spending survey, budgets are up by 5.4 percent which is a lot higher compared the last year. That is slightly larger increase than last year's 5 percent. In addition, there are more than 70 percent of respondents believe they will find more funds for their projects during the year. The factor for this spending growth is that: as the economy grows, companies want to improve revenues, not just to lower costs. Companies spending on hardware and systems are relatively flat as companies are cutting costs by replacing legacy systems, investing in virtual servers and adopting open source and voice over Internet protocols.

This article presents updates on IT business continuity priorities. Shift business continuity focuses on software, rather than adding more hardware for failover. Another solution is to allocate risk assessment tasks to development and operations organizations. Build in processes is also necessary for graceful degradation of service so that failures in an environment with fragile, tightly integrated applications do not cascade through the entire system. Moreover, improve management of IT configurations, software releases and changes to IT infrastructure, particularly in distributed computing environment.