Q&A with IBM's Ross Mauri: Talking Power Systems and Power7
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Back in early 2006, one of the up-and-coming executives at IBM was tapped to become the general manager of the company's fast-growing pSeries Unix server and workstation business line. Two reorganizations and two years later, and that executive, Ross Mauri, a graduate of Marist College--one of the hotbeds of academic mainframia--who aspired once to merely be an MVS systems programmer at Big Blue, found himself in charge of a very big piece of IBM. Perhaps the most important part, too. READ MORE >

IBM's Q2 Server Sales: Let's Do Some Math
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

I have never understood why IT suppliers do not just come out and report their sales by product categories, but I suspect that we can blame the accountants and chief financial officers at those suppliers and the nervousness of the marketeers, who want to say as little as possible about how well or poorly they are doing in any product category. Anyway, because IT vendors only talk broadly and vaguely about their sales, IT consultants, Wall Street analysts, and wiseguy journalists are left each quarter to take a stab at trying to figure out actual sales for products. READ MORE >

IBM Creates a New Security PTF Group for i Operating Systems
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Our intrepid PTF watcher, Doug Bidwell of Power Systems reseller and systems integrator DLB Associates, says that starting with last week's batch of PTF patches for the latest releases of the i operating system, Big Blue has done something that it probably should have done a long time ago. It has created a Security Group PTF set of patches, which roll security patches all together in one place for a specific OS/400, i5/OS, or i release. READ MORE >

Mad Dog 21/21: Newtonian Economics
by Hesh Wiener

Isaac Newton's contributions to science and mathematics were monumental. They elevated English technology to a state of great prominence and helped usher in the Age of Enlightenment. More than three centuries later, every teenager studying science is taught classical mechanics, and Newton's principles provides food for thought in other disciplines, too. IBM's recent financial results, a sunny patch on a graying economic landscape, beg for analysis as well as praise, and Newton's laws might offer just the metaphorical basis required to examine Big Blue's blooming. READ MORE >