http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bnsindex.html Breaking News. en-us 2013 Guild Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved March 6, 2013 IT Jungle IT Jungle http://www.itjungle/com/bns/bns-rss.html 20 http://www.itjungle.com/images/break/title_break.gif http://www.itjungle/com/bns/bns-rss.html 275 50 http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns030613-story01.html Many of us who follow the IBM systems business have been predicting this day might come for many years and then talking ourselves into thinking it would not happen. But the day finally came on March 5. That was when the top brass of Big Blue's Systems and Technology Group held a meeting with employees of the Rochester, Minnesota, facility that gave birth to the System/3 in 1969 and successor technologies that culminated in the Power Systems and now PureSystems lines, telling them that they would no longer be making commercial systems at the legendary facility. http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns030613-story01.html March 6, 2013 http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns020613-story01.html IBM yesterday unveiled IBM i 7.1 TR6, the sixth Technology Refresh since IBM shifted to the agile development model for the OS in 2010. TR6 introduces a range of new technologies, including DB2 for i enhancements, support for USB flash drives, and support for the latest SSL standard, among others. Better manageability, high availability, and set-up capabilities round out the release. http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns020613-story01.html February 6, 2013 http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns020513-story02.html While the entry part of the Power Systems market has been awaiting its Power7+ refresh, putting new processors and fatter memory and disk drives into essentially the same enclosures that were refreshed at the end of 2011, the midrange of the Power Systems line has been getting a little long in the tooth and was perhaps more in need of some re-engineering. And luckily for customers using midrange Power iron, that is precisely what IBM has done as part of the February 5 announcements. http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns020513-story02.html February 5, 2013 http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns020513-story01.html It has been a long, long time since IBM both understood and did something dramatic about the competitive pressure that X86-based servers have put on its RISC-based systems. The last time I can remember Big Blue really going after X86 boxes was back when the AS/400 Model 170 Invader servers came out in February 1998. Although, to be fair, the Power 520 M15 and M25 models that came out a decade later were no slouches, either. This time around, we don't have to wait a decade for IBM to get serious. With the entry Power7+ machines announced today, it only took five years. http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns020513-story01.html February 5, 2013 http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns012313-story01.html If IBM could control the situation its way, it would probably never launch new Power Systems and System z mainframe systems anywhere even close to on the same cycle because keeping them spaced would allow its Systems and Technology Group to operate more like a multi-cylinder engine, running smoothly, rather than a pile driver, sometimes up and sometimes down. But managing chip designs and system rollouts is complex--being late is normal and being on time is unusual--and companies still think on annual cycles. http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns012313-story01.html January 23, 2013 http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns111412-story01.html Big Blue was pretty clear that it was not going to roll out any more servers using its Power7+ processors when it launched the Power 770+ and Power 780+ enterprise-class boxes back on October 3, but somewhere along the way, someone either changed their minds inside of IBM or didn't get the memo that the Flex System p260 server nodes would be upgraded with the Power7+ chips. Because that, in fact, is what happened yesterday. http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns111412-story01.html November 14, 2012 http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns101712-story01.html IBM is always bragging about how good it is to have annuity-like businesses that pay out, month after month, and in discussing the company's results for the third quarter, the company's chief financial officer, Mark Loughridge, reminded everyone that more than half of IBM's sales and about 60 percent of its profits come from these areas, which include mainframe software licenses and services contracts. That other half of the revenue stream can be tough, and that other 40 percent of the profits is not a given, as the financial results for the quarter in September showed. http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns101712-story01.html October 17, 2012 http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns100312-story01.html As an avid reader of The Four Hundred, you were thinking that IBM was going to start rolling out the Power7+ processors at the high-end of the Power Systems server line, where volumes are lowest and where the company can extract the most money possible out of each chip that comes off the line. And as usual, you were right. And if you are by any chance in the middle of a Power 770 or Power 780 deal, you need to stop and take a hard look at the new Power 770+ and Power 780+ machines that were announced today. http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns100312-story01.html October 3, 2012 http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns081712-story01.html IBM has been partnering with SandForce, now part of storage controller maker LSI, and Fusion-io for server-based PCI-Express cards with flash memory welded onto them to boost server performance. But now, with the acquisition of Texas Memory Systems, there's a new flash storage sheriff in town. http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns081712-story01.html August 17, 2012 http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns081512-story01.html Business Computer Design Int'l. and Zend Technologies today unveiled a partnership to boost the visibility and usability of their respective PHP offerings for IBM i shops. The pact today revolves primarily around sales and marketing initiatives for the Zend Server for IBM i runtime environment and BCD's template-based PHP development tool, but the companies are working on delivering more integration in the products themselves at some point in the future. http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns081512-story01.html August 15, 2012 http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns071812-story01.html You have to hand it to IBM. The major economies that used to lead the global economic engine are having a bit of trouble with the growth markets coming on, and being that International is in fact the company's first name and Business is its middle name, you would expect for Big Blue to not worry about where it makes its sales or even if sales grow so long as profits do. And that is exactly what the company has focused on and accomplished in the second quarter. http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns071812-story01.html July 18, 2012 http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns062912-story01.html System management, security, and database query software maker Help/Systems has been on an acquisition tear for the past six years, and has done it again with a deal to buy British security software maker Safestone Technologies. The Safestone buy marks the third acquisition by Help/Systems in the past 13 months and demonstrates that the company is serious about extending from its IBM i base out to AIX and Linux platforms. http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns062912-story01.html June 29, 2012 http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns042512-story02.html IBM is getting nervous about the price disparity between Power and X86 servers again and wants to expand the total addressable market for its Power machinery. And to those ends, Big Blue has gussied up some Power machines in tuxedos to match their Penguin-powered operating system. These new PowerLinux machines have lower hardware prices than the same iron when configured to run either IBM i or AIX and, says IBM, can meet or beat two-socket X86 servers running Linux. http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns042512-story02.html April 18, 2012 http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns042512-story01.html As The Four Hundred told you months ago, IBM was indeed working on a Technology Refresh update for its IBM i operating system for the spring and this update does indeed include live partition mobility, bringing the IBM i platform up to the same level of logical partition live migration that AIX and Linux on Power have had for years. The Tech Refresh also includes a number of other enhancements to the integrated DB2 for i database, a repackaging of the DB2 Web Query tool, and a number of other tweaks and changes. http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns042512-story01.html April 18, 2012 http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns041112-story01.html IBM may have a new president and CEO, but you would be hard-pressed to find any difference between the numbers turned in by Ginni Rometty in her first quarter at the helm of Big Blue and those of her predecessor, chairman Sam Palmisano, in his last quarter standing at the wheel in the fourth quarter of 2011. To many, this makes IBM almost boring in its predictability, but if you are counting on rising earnings driving a rising stock price as well as dividends, this is probably the kind of hum-drum thing you like. http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns041812-story01.html April 18, 2012