Hogging the Ground Day
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

It might seem a bit illogical to do any planning for the future on the mood of a giant rodent living in a small rural town on the west end of Pennsylvania, but given the experience I have had trusting the whiz kids from Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, I am beginning to think that maybe it would be a good idea for Punxsutawney Phil to be sitting in on boardroom meetings at the major financial services firms and perhaps attending Congress as a representative. READ MORE >

IBM Sunsets i5/OS V5R4, Kills Older 595 Iron
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Time moves on, as it always does. And that means that IBM wants to start cutting older products in the Power Systems i product line as it peddles the current products and puts the finishing touches on whatever future products we can expect to be rolled out later in 2009 and maybe in early 2010. Last week, IBM warned customers that it was sunsetting i5/OS V5R4 and at the same time killed off some iSeries older iron. READ MORE >

MaxAva Gets Inventive With Subscription Model for HA
by Alex Woodie

Maximum Availability will today roll out a new program that lets customers subscribe to *noMAX, its i OS high availability software, instead of buying it outright. By allowing customers to pay for their software on a monthly basis instead of shelling out $20,000 or more in upfront software license fees, MaxAva is helping customers fly under the radar of the budget director, while perhaps boosting its business in a tough economy. MaxAva also made a couple of new features available to *noMAX customers. READ MORE >

IBM Rejiggers Power Systems, System i and p Prices
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

It is a tough economic environment out there, and with IBM trying to scare up a little midrange business, sometimes that means making more deals and sometimes that means raising prices so the deals you have give you a little more dough. As is usually the case, you have to have a lot of time on your hands to figure out exactly what IBM has changed prices on, and luckily for you, I did the work for you. READ MORE >