IBM Ready to Announce Power6-Based System i Box

Published: July 26, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

During IBM's conference call with Wall Street analysts last week, the company's chief financial officer, Mark Loughridge, confirmed the rumors that have been going around that IBM would be soon announcing a Power6-based server with the System i moniker on it.

Specifically, Loughridge said it would be announced later in the third quarter, but he might just as well have said sooner in the third quarter because the announcement is, in fact, tomorrow.

IBM has only announced one Power6-based server so far, a System p 570 server that has been tweaked to support the Power6 chip instead of the Power5+ chip. Given that IBM has just carved out the new Power Systems division within Systems and Technology Group, which includes System i 570 and 595 machines as well as the entire Power-based System p server family, and that it has already earlier this year announced entry machines with user-based pricing that are now in its Business Systems division, a System i 570 box seems the likely candidate for announcements.

IBM had been pretty firm late last year that it would not do any major hardware announcements in the System i line in 2007 and had hinted that a new operating system release could come out in 2007 or early 2008. But the market situation has changed, so IBM's tactics have adapted. With high-end System i machines now part of the Power Systems division, it seems likely that from here on out big i5/OS shops will get new servers at the same time--and under closer terms and conditions--as big AIX shops get. It also seems likely that entry and midrange boxes now in the Business Systems division will be tweaked and changed according to a separate schedule from the bigger System i boxes.

Whatever IBM does tomorrow, IT Jungle will, of course, have full coverage of IBM's announcements in our Four Hundred Stuff newsletter, which we do when Big Blue launches new products on a Monday after The Four Hundred has been published. We will also have follow-up coverage on the announcements in the subsequent issues of The Four Hundred and Four Hundred Stuff, covering smaller announcements and delving into the details on the larger ones.

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