IBM i 7.1 Tech Refresh Sports Live Partition Mobility
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

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. READ MORE >

IBM Peddles Discounted, Linux-Only Power Iron
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

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. READ MORE >

The 'New' Infor Keeps Commitment To IBM i Customers
by Alex Woodie

As the largest provider of IBM i-based ERP applications, Infor is a critical component of the midrange community. Now that Lawson has been integrated into the company, Infor has 19,000 paying customers running software on IBM i, i5/OS, and OS/400. And while some in the industry have criticized Infor's support of the platform, its actions as a whole--and, in particular, comments by Infor executives and product roadmaps shared at last week's Inforum 2012 conference--demonstrate a firm commitment to the IBM i platform and IBM i customers. READ MORE >

As I See It: Spooky Action at Great Distance
by Victor Rozek

From Alaska to Chile, Norway to New Zealand, 65 random number generators (RNGs) were going about their business generating random numbers. Then the unexplainable happened. But more about that later. The RNGs are part of a larger scientific effort called the Global Coherence Initiative (GCI), a research project that uses a vast array of magnetic field detectors to monitor fluctuations in the earth's geomagnetic fields. They also measure pulsations and resonances in the ionosphere--the portion of the atmosphere extending approximately 30 to 250 miles above the Earth--associated with what scientists call excitations. READ MORE >