The i Platform Roadmap Is a Work in Progress
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

With the Power Systems convergence more or less accomplished, on paper at least if not in the minds and data centers of System i and System p customers, and with Bill Zeitler, general manager of IBM's Systems and Technology Group retiring on August 1 and the company's supply chain expert, Bob Moffatt, taking over the server unit at that time, tongues are a-wagging about the long-term future of the i platform. It was a coincidence that Neil Palmer's article in this newsletter last week, There's No i in Future, But Is There a Future in i?, came out at the same time as IBM chairman and chief executive officer, Sam Palmisano, announced Zeitler's departure, but this story also got people to thinking about the long-term support within IBM for the i platform. READ MORE >

IBM Loses Two Key Executives to Retirement--Really
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The deck chairs are changing once again at the good ship Big Blue, and this time, not only are the top brass moving into new roles at the company, but some heavy hitters at IBM are trading in their office chairs for Adirondack chairs at their vacation hangouts as they retire from the company. It is hard to get any bluer than Bill Zeitler and Nick Donofrio, but a new team of managers is now being given a chance to try now that these two are retiring from the company in the wake of their impending 60th birthdays. READ MORE >

Java Performance Is OS Agnostic on Power6 Gear
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Way back when, in the dawn of time--well, about a decade ago when IBM first caught the Java bug and decided that this would be the language of choice on its commercial servers and their operating systems--the software engineering teams in Rochester, Minnesota, and Toronto, Ontario, worked diligently to take advantage of the 64-bit addressing that OS/400 had and that many Unixes of the time lacked. The idea was simple: If Java was going to be the imposed lingua franca for future application development, then OS/400 would speak it fluently--and fast. READ MORE >

As I See It: Soothing the Savage Programmer
by Victor Rozek

Dr. Masaru Emoto has a gentle, curious face and a facile mind with which he probes the bumpy intersection of science and metaphysics. Using a dark-field microscope with photographic capabilities, he researches the effects of external factors on the molecular structure of water. Not just such obvious influences as pollution, but much more esoteric factors not commonly thought to possess substance-altering properties, such as thoughts, words, and music. READ MORE >