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IBM Releases Beta of "Stinger" DB2 for Power-Linux Combo

Two months ago, at LinuxWorld, IBM was talking up the future version of DB2 Integrated Cluster Environment for the Power platform, which was code-named "Stinger." Back then, IBM said that DB2 ICE, a clustered and grid-aware version of DB2 that competes with Oracle's current Oracle9i Real Application Clusters and future Oracle10g databases, would be commercialized on the Power platform within six to nine months. Last week, IBM announced the technology preview of Stinger on the Linux partitions running on both iSeries and pSeries servers. You can sign up for the beta program at www.ibm.com/db2/stinger. Stinger also will be available on Unix and Windows platforms and is being beta tested on these platforms as well as on Power-Linux.

The kinds of clusters that Oracle9i RAC and DB2 ICE implement allow a database to be distributed over many machines and to actually share work, not just cover each other in the event of a failed server node. And just in case you forgot, OS/400 and its DB2 variant have had this capability since DB2 Multisystem was rolled out with OS/400 V3R7 in late 1995. This is only new technology to the Unix, Windows, and Linux markets.

iTera Says Business Is Booming for iSeries High Availability and Replication

iTera last week reported that the number of licenses for its Echo2 high availability software increased by a hefty 500 percent in 2003 and that revenues were up more than 300 percent. The company is not publicly traded, and is therefore not required to disclose financial results to the public (and, in fact, it didn't provide any specific dollar figures). But from the sound of things, the company simply wanted to share the good news and to trumpet its horn, which you're allowed to do when you are a relatively new company that has taken on established competitors in a very tough market, like the iSeries high availablity market.

iTera, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, reports that it sold Echo2 to 122 new high availability customers in several countries, which equates to more than 250 new licenses of the product. iTera's president, Dan NeVille, says the 2003 results show that iTera, in only three years, has been embraced as a bona fide vendor of high availability software and has gained traction against its rivals in the market. "One third of the licenses we sold in 2003 were to companies that replaced high availability software due to frustrations with these products," NeVille says.

The company is expecting 2004 to be just as good, although it will be tough to match 500 percent. Nonetheless, iTera is predicting that the number of new high availability customers added to its installed base will double in 2004. Bill Rice, director of marketing at iTera, says that one of the reasons why it can keep growing so fast is that intense competition in the high availability space among the software suppliers, as well as the continual decrease in the price of servers, have made high availability a solution that even small and midsized shops can afford these days. "High availability has gone from being a Global 2000 product down into the SMB [small and midsized business]," says Rice. "And it's a whole, wide-open territory for all of us now."

DataMirror, Andrews Extend Access to ERP Systems

DataMirror and Andrews Consulting Group have expanded their partnership to support additional ERP packages with Andrews' reporting tool. The pair already had a partnership in place to use DataMirror's Transformation Server data synchronization software to move data, from a variety of sources, into Andrews' RapidDecision software, a prepackaged tool that provides analytics and structured report distribution for business intelligence, Website integration, CRM integration, and SCM integration workloads. As a result of the heightened partnership, announced last week, the companies are now supporting MAPICS's ERP for iSeries, PeopleSoft's World, and SSA Global's BPCS ERP suites as data sources.

Vision Solutions Reports Increase in Revenues for 2003

Total revenues for Vision Solutions increased 11 percent during fiscal year 2003, the Irvine, California, provider of high availability and replication software for OS/400 and other platforms reported last week. The company, which is the sole subsidiary of publicly traded IDION Technology Holdings, said revenues for the year, ending December 31, 2003, were a record $32.8 million, which included 25 percent growth in maintenance revenue and 9 percent growth in the services component of the company's business. New license revenue increased 1 percent, to $15.3 million. Vision's chief executive, Nicolaas Vlok, attributed the successful year--which had its ups and downs, including the launch of its next-generation high availability product, called Orion, as well as a continued acquisition of its stock by rival DataMirror--to the company's "long-term strategy of building a profitable, world-class, high-availability solutions company." The company kept its overhead low and reported earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) of $3.9 million. At the end of the year, Vision had signed 256 new customers around the world and had $10.4 million in the bank.

The Burnham Group Gets IBM BP Status

The Burnham Group is now in the iSeries hardware business. Last week, the Hampshire, Illinois, IT consulting firm announced that it has been granted iSeries Business Partner status by IBM, enabling the company to sell new iSeries hardware to customers. Since IBM doesn't want its iSeries business partners peddling hardware alone, the key to achieving Big Blue's blessing for The Burnham Group was the formation of two new partnerships with OS/400 software providers Maximum Availability, a high availability software provider, and RJS Software Systems, which provides reporting tools and forms management. The company, which also sells Hewlett-Packard, 3com, and Cisco Systems equipment, has also hired two iSeries industry professionals. "Now we can serve as sole vendor for our existing iSeries users and prospective customers," says Lee Orenstein, the company's president.

IBM Chases Entry Customers with xSeries 206, 306

If you use Windows- or Linux-based servers as departmental or distributed machines for divisions in conjunction with your iSeries servers, you might want to take a look at some new servers announced by IBM. The company announced its latest foray into the fiercely competitive entry X86 server market with two new uniprocessors, one of which Big Blue hopes to sell for $499.

IBM has announced a new tower server, the xSeries 206, and a new rack-mounted server, the xSeries 306. Both machines feature hot-swappable Serial ATA drives, making IBM the first vendor to deliver this to the market. ATA IDE drives, which are used in PCs, are a much less expensive alternative to the SCSI disk drives commonly used in higher-end servers. With entry servers coming with integrated RAID 1 mirroring and RAID 5 parity/striping data protection, even ATA drives that are not designed to handle the same duty cycles or deliver the same bandwidth as the current Ultra320 SCSI disks can be ganged up and made reliable and fast enough for small businesses to do real work on. This is why even these entry machines now have IBM's Server RAID 7e controller built in as a standard feature.

IBM has not yet released the full technical details of these new machines, but they both support Pentium 4 processors and up to 8 GB of main memory. The tower xSeries 206 costs $499 in a base configuration, and the rack-mounted xSeries 306 costs $1,339. The xSeries 205, the predecessor to the new xSeries 206, supports the latest Pentium 4 chips and costs $499 in a base configuration, but only goes up to 2 GB of main memory and does not have hot-swap ATA drives. The xSeries 305 supports the Pentium 4 processor as well, like the xSeries 306 it replaces, but it maxed out at 4 GB of main memory and costs $1,016 in a base configuration.

Get the Latest OS/400 PTF Guide

Our partner DLB Associates has been keeping track of IBM's PTF updates to OS/400 and its related programs. Here are the latest OS/400 PTF Guides:

February 21

February 28

March 6

March 13

March 20