As a shortage of developers with mainframe skills looms over the industry, IBM and some of its partners hope to renew interest in the big systems through partnerships with universities, new programs, new tools, and support for modern languages and architectures. Motivating the move is that, while IBM’s mainframe business has picked up, the work force of developers who write applications for the mainframe has dwindled, company officials said. IBM is addressing this skills challenge by creating programs to educate and train people on z/OS, make it easier to manage z/OS, and simplify the development and deployment of business applications on z/OS. IBM’s Academic Initiative for System z now features more than 250 colleges and universities worldwide, delivering mainframe education to more than 10,000 students. IBM also has helped develop 12 enterprise system courses as well as a System z mastery exam that became available this year.

Using a case study, the authors of this article describe some best practices and recommendations from the field for securing an IBM Lotus Domino Web server.

New in IBM Lotus Domino 7, the Web service design element is a great way to expose services to the world. But do you know how easy it is to use the Apache Axis framework for consuming Web services? Discover how to take advantage of Apache Axis and Lotus Domino 7 technologies to create a Web service consumer.

Nearly 60 percent of CIOs anticipate increasing their software spending through the rest of 2006, while only 33 percent expect spending to remain flat and 2 percent expect a decrease in spending. Those are the results of a new survey by Merrill Lynch analysts, who released their results on Aug. 16 in a report called "July ’06 Survey of Software Spending Intentions."

New air travel safety concerns have made it more likely that you’ll have to send your laptop as checked luggage. The threat was terrorism, so it’s understandable why passengers on some trans-Atlantic flights suddenly found themselves trying to find a way to stash their electronics, including their laptop computers, iPods, cell phones and BlackBerry devices, into their checked luggage. Some of those items, such as cell phones, will travel fine there, but others, notably your laptop computer, aren’t designed to handle the stress of luggage handlers and baggage sorting machines. Your chances of getting your laptop back intact aren’t exactly great. eWeek’s Wayne Rash offers his tips and suggestions for laptop luggage survival.

Bug hunters are turning the tables on software makers in the debate over reporting flaws. In recent years, software companies have hammered out rules with researchers on disclosure, which cover how and when vulnerabilities are made public. Now flaw finders want something in return: more information from software providers on what they are doing to tackle the holes the researchers have reported.

There have been lots of changes in the first two years of Adobe’s promising rich Internet platform, and that’s meant choppy waters for developers. But eWEEK Labs finds that Version 2 adds the stability and maturity needed to make Flex a major platform for creating Web apps and services.

CA will cut about 1,700 jobs as it attempts to cut costs, after its net income fell 64 percent in its 2007 first quarter, which ended June 30. The layoffs are part of a cost-reduction plan that also includes consolidation of facilities and other measures. The plan is expected to yield about US$200 million in annualized savings when completed toward the end of fiscal 2008, the company said Monday.

OpenSolaris isn’t a true open-source project, but rather a "facade," because Sun Microsystems doesn’t share control of it with outsiders, executives from rival IBM say. "Sun holds it all behind the firewall. The community sees nothing," Dan Frye, the IBM vice president who runs the company’s Linux Technology Center, said Tuesday in an interview at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. "It’s a facade. There’s lots of marketing, but no community to speak of."

U.S. consumer safety officials said on Tuesday that they are reviewing all Sony-made lithium ion batteries in laptop computers for fire hazards after Dell announced the largest electronics recall in the United States. Dell, the No. 1 maker of personal computers, on Monday said it is recalling 4.1 million notebook batteries made by Sony because they could overheat and catch fire. A battery of the type involved in the recall was in a Dell laptop that erupted in flames in Japan earlier this year. The Sony batteries are also used in laptops from Hewlett-Packard, Apple Computer and Lenovo.