A longstanding relationship between IBM and Nortel appears threatened by Nortel's bankruptcy filing.

By Chris Smith

Buried on the Nortel Web site is a listing of a course the company offers its employees on how to take advantage of the opportunity its partnership with IBM presents. Called "Executing with IBM in 2009," the listing describes a course that "will provide confirmation of the Nortel Enterprise strategy of IBM as our lead partner for solutions and communications enabled applications..." Clicking on the course title, however, brings up a page that indicates the course is no longer offered.

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The need for HA is no laughing matter in the current economic climate. Check out your HA software options for the System i.

By John Ghrist

Keeping your System i servers processing 100 percent of the time was, for many years, not considered a serious requirement for any but the largest of companies. The intrinsic reliability of the System i and its predecessors was good enough for most SMBs, which relied on the platform to handle processing during normal business hours. Add to that the cumbersome implementation of early high availability (HA) systems for the platform in the late '90s and into the current decade, and you had a market situation such that, for the majority of System i shops, HA was either a luxury most enterprises had no room for in their IT budgets or the potential makings of a standup comedy routine at a company party.