With the release in April of the z9 Business Class mainframe, IBM announced that it saw not only the midrange as a key market for its high-end computers, but also emerging markets like China, where the announcement was made. For the last three-plus months, the job of continuing the mainframe initiative has been under the direction of Jim Stallings, an IBM veteran who most recently oversaw open standards, intellectual property income and Linux for Big Blue. In an interview with eWEEK Senior Editor Jeffrey Burt, Stallings talked about the search for new mainframe business, the focus on security and the programs to bring new blood into the mainframe world.

Symantec laid off staff and said it is shaking up its network and gateway security business, ending the company’s experiment with security hardware appliances. The company said it will reduce future investment in the SGS (Symantec Gateway Security), SNS 7100 (Symantec Network Security), and SGS Advanced Manager 3.0 appliances, according to a statement provided to InfoWorld. The announcement is evidence that Symantec is shifting its strategy away from being a "one stop shop" for security wares, and will focus on lucrative security management and services, said John Pescatore, a vice president at Gartner.

IT matters. According to an upcoming Harvard Business School study, higher IT capability directly correlates with superior revenue growth. At the SIA (Securities Industry Association) Technology Management Conference, Marco Iansiti, the David Sarnoff Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and Julio Gomez, managing director of financial services research at Keystone Strategy in San Francisco, shared some of the findings of their joint study in a workshop titled "IT Matters."

IBM announced new software to help customers and software developers build security into their business applications, thereby putting them in a much stronger position in the battle against hackers, identity thieves and malicious users. The security tools are available to users at no charge. This is IBM’s latest effort to help thwart IT security breaches affecting both big and small businesses.

The Navy has begun a criminal investigation after Social Security numbers and other personal data for 28,000 sailors and family members were found on a civilian Web site. The Navy said Friday the information was in five documents and included people’s names, birth dates and Social Security numbers. Navy spokesman Lt. Justin Cole would not identify the Web site or its owner. He said the information had been removed. Cole would not provide any details about how the information ended up on the site.

The United States has never experienced a massive Internet outage, but a coalition of dynamic chief executives said Friday that the nation must do more to prepare for that prospect. The cautionary document was a product of the Business Roundtable, whose 160 corporate members include companies ranging from Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun Microsystems to General Motors, Home Depot and Coca-Cola. All told, the group’s high-rolling membership counts $4.5 trillion in annual revenues, more than 10 million employees, and nearly a third the total value of the U.S. stock market.

Here at ZATZ we are inundated with press releases on a daily basis, which is great because it helps us bring you news of the newest, latest and greatest products. But some of those releases could use a bit of spit and polish to ensure they get seen and published. In this article that was originally published in Outlook Power Magazine, ZATZ Editor in Chief David Gewirtz details the Top 10 PR mistakes.

It was only a few years ago that parents were cautioning their children not to set off into technology careers; the recession after the boom years shattered the sheen on the field, which no longer seemed a safe place to invest one’s future. While these fears have been far from assuaged, tales of America’s IT demise now seem more greatly exaggerated. IT execs are raking in more than ever, smaller tech markets are blooming across the country, and the field boasts growth despite a slowing market.

Personal information on about 26,000 Washington, D.C.-area employees and contractors of the U.S. Department of Agriculture may be at risk after a hacking incident earlier this month, officials said Wednesday. It’s still unknown whether the hacker actually managed to obtain the names, Social Security numbers and photographs of the individuals whose information was housed on the affected database, the agency said. The database also contained information that is "readily available to the public" but no financial or health records.

Playing on Apple’s past "Switch" ad campaign, which was aimed at getting Windows users to migrate to Apple’s Mac OS X-based computers, a few longtime Mac and open-source gurus are vocally publicizing their switch away from Apple’s platform to more open-source solutions. Though the practical impact is impossible to gauge, their arguments have been making waves.