The State of PHP on the Power Systems i
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

When you follow the IT market for a living, sometimes you get lucky and spot a trend way out in the future and maybe you get to see it come true. Maybe you don't. I have been, for instance, thinking that something akin to cloud computing (it was called utility computing back then) would be coming along since the dot-com boom started, just because of the economies of scope and scale aggregated computing farms offer and the high-touch, and therefore high-cost, nature of maintaining servers. We'll see if this comes to pass. But back in early 2005, it didn't take a genius to figure out that PHP was eventually going to come to the i platform--the iSeries back then. READ MORE >

IBM Tweaks Some i Deals, Nukes Some Old i Tools
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Last Tuesday, on IBM announcement day, the sales and marketing people at Big Blue were out tweaking a few deals here and there that affect the Power Systems i platform, and the company also removed some i-related tools from the product catalog. Considering that we are in the second quarter and that the now annual COMMON midrange user group meeting is coming up, you'd expect more action out of the company on the announcement front. READ MORE >

Come On Out, Power6+, You Win
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

When it comes to the Power6+ processor, IBM has been as quiet as a child playing hide and seek that wants to win the game so badly that she ends up falling asleep in the hall closet where the sheets and towels are and can't hear that everyone has given up the game. This is a great way to win the game--my wife actually did this as a child--but it also has the effect of scaring the living daylights out of the adults. READ MORE >

As I See It: Berry Berry Annoying
by Victor Rozek

A story, perhaps apocryphal, made the rounds a while back about a newly hired manager. The day he was scheduled to attend his first meeting, he was running late. As he hurriedly entered the conference room, he was surprised to notice that the people around the table were all sitting in silence, with their heads bowed and their hands clasped in their laps. Not knowing what to make of this, it occurred to him that perhaps in this corporate culture meetings started with an invocation or a moment of silence. Then he noticed what was actually going on: they were all busy pounding away on their BlackBerries. READ MORE >