IBM Adds New SSD and Fat SFF Disk to Power Systems
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Like most of you, I am still chewing through the latest Power Systems announcements from IBM. We covered the five new systems that Big Blue announced on August 17 in as much detail as was possible on announcement day, and followed up with detailed price and performance information in the weeks following the announcement. We've also gone into pricing for IBM i on the boxes, and the deals the company is making on software to encourage shops to upgrade to new Power7 iron. READ MORE >

Power7 Planning Beyond the Bells and Whistles
by Dan Burger

While IBM gets busy with its Fall 2010 Power of the i road show schedule (see the Redbooks, White Papers, and Other OS/400 Resources section of Four Hundred Monitor for dates and cities), business partners have their own plans for getting out and talking about Power7 and IBM i 7.1. Where Big Blue tends to make grandiose presentations that showcase all the bells and whistles, the business partners spend more time talking with individuals about the best fit for their purposes. READ MORE >

Companies Buy Lots of Disk Storage--At Cheap Prices--in Q2
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The faltering economy hit the storage market almost as hard as it hit the server racket, but both have recovered to reasonable levels as 2010 has progressed. According to the latest numbers coming out of IT market researcher IDC, the appetite for internal and external disk storage rebounded in the second quarter. Storage didn't bounce as high as servers did in the quarter, but then again, storage was not hit as hard during the Great Recession last year, either. READ MORE >

As I See It: Introducing the New Quarterlife Crisis (with Cheese)
by Victor Rozek

Quarterlife Crisis. When I first heard the phrase, I thought it sounded silly. The notion of 20-somethings having their mid-life crises two decades early had the suspicious ring of some trumped up Madison Avenue condition that Pfizer would gladly sell you drugs to assuage. I could almost hear the cheerful announcer intoning the disclaimers: side effects include kidney failure and rectal bleeding. READ MORE >