IBM Takes Its Own Server Consolidation Medicine
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Server maker IBM has been banging the drums about infrastructure simplification, server consolidation, and the economic benefits of the mainframe platform as a consolidation platform for so long that its arms must be tired. Someone in the hierarchy at Big Blue finally figured out that maybe the company should look at its own data centers and take a little of its own medicine. And having done that, IBM is about ready to collapse a whole bunch of RISC and X86 servers--most of them running Unix and none of them running Windows--down to a much smaller number of mainframes. READ MORE >

Top Mainframe Stories from Around the Web

(PCWorld) Green thinking from Big Blue is getting a lot of press. With energy costs and supplies prying their way into the awareness of high-level executives, IBM is on a mission to showcase the mainframe as an intelligent alternative sprawling data centers and their appetite for power. READ MORE >

(eWeek) When pro mainframe articles appear in mega-circulation publications like eWeek and PC World in the same week, it makes you wonder if someone in the System z division found a four-leaf clover or some other lucky charm. It could be the key was mentioning energy savings during the heat of the summer. This story has carbon footprints all over it. READ MORE >

(CIO Insight) "We've manufactured a crisis," says Phil Murphy, principal analyst at Forrester Research, talking about the pending loss of skilled IT professionals due to retirement. Legacy skills supply and demand appears in balance. However, that will change and the unprepared will eventually find themselves in crisis mode if preventive steps are not taken. READ MORE >

(SearchDataCenter) CA, the company formerly known as Computer Associates, claims Rocket Software stole intellectual property related to CA's software that manages DB2 databases. The company hopes to win an injunction against Rocket and also put a $200 million hurt on them. READ MORE >

(LinuxInsider) Did you know that IBM's data centers support more than 350,000 users and could cover the equivalent of 139 football fields? Consolidating 3,900 servers onto 30 mainframes seems almost small by comparison. I wonder how tall 3,900 servers would be when stacked one on top of the other. Or if all the network cables in all the IBM data centers were laid end to end, would it reach to the moon? READ MORE >

Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings

See our full calendar of events at
http://www.itjungle.com/big/big-calendar.html

August 12-17 -- San Diego, California - IBM technical training tailored for enterprise-class IT professionals will be featured at the SHARE user conference. More than 700 technical sessions and hands-on labs will be presented by industry experts, top developers, and experienced users. Session topics range from implementation of new software releases to in-depth views of the latest technologies. Session topics will include services-oriented architecture, Web services, ITIL, and mobile computing. A preconference workshop on DB2 for z/OS is also on the agenda. If you don't know about SHARE, you should. It has been educating IT professionals since 1955--the longest history of any IT user group. LEARN MORE >

September 17-21 San Antonio, Texas - The IBM System z Conference and Expo presents sessions on topics such as virtualization, security, resiliency, workload management, and integration. More than 350 in-depth elective sessions will highlight IBM System z9 and zSeries and Systems Storage. The sessions are divided into the following focus areas: General Interest and Management, z/OS, z/VM, z/VSE and Linux. LEARN MORE >

October 8-11 -- Orlando, Florida - The IBM WebSphere Portal Technical Conference will feature the latest product upgrades and platform extensions for the popular middleware. Among the highlights will be an emphasis on faster deployment of composite applications, enhanced Web 2.0 support, simplified portal-based solutions, and increased integration with business processes. IBM product architects and developers, business partners, and customers will provide training, case studies, and best practices information. Certification testing will be available and a vendor expo will be included. LEARN MORE >

December 2-7 -- San Diego, California - The 33rd annual Computer Measurement Group conference, CMG2007, brings together data processing professionals interested in system evaluation to maximize performance measured in terms of response time, throughput, and through capacity management. Sessions are geared toward making enhancements to existing systems or designing new systems with the aim of providing adequate performance at a reasonable cost. The courses are divided into two groups. One group consists of platform agnostic sessions and provides attendees with basic knowledge that is independent of any specific hardware or operating system. The second group is platform specific specializing in operating systems such as z/OS, Windows, Unix and Linux. LEARN MORE >