Look for an Interim i Release Next Year, and i 6.2 in Early 2010
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

As some of you know, IBM hosted two Power Systems Technical Universities in Chicago last week--one for i nerds and the other for AIX and Linux techies. As we went to press with this issue of the newsletter, some news was beginning to filter back into the cosmic ether--OK, really my email and my telephone, nothing cosmic about it--about what IBM is telling the i crowd. There's nothing earth shattering so far, but some interesting points. READ MORE >

Power 550 i Edition Versus Windows: Get Big Discounts on i Software
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

In last week's issue of The Four Hundred, I did the first in a series of articles comparing the Power Systems i Edition platform to other competitive platforms. In that case, I compared entry Power 520 rack servers and JS12 blade servers in the new BladeCenter S chassis to ProLiant alternatives running Windows from Hewlett-Packard. I was gratified to see that the i platforms were absolutely competitive with the Windows iron, at least when comparing machines with system software suitable for online transaction processing. READ MORE >

Forrester Says IT Spending Is Choppy Across Industries and Geographies
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Like many of you who have been in the IT industry for a few decades, I watch the ebb and flow of IT spending as IT budgets meet the hard realities or thrilling exuberance of the business environments in particular industries and geographies. With the steady stream of bad economic news--I do not need to get into the litany, since I know all readers of The Four Hundred are informed citizens of the world--it is no surprise we are as jumpy as the economies we participate in. And, IT spending, according to a recent study from Forrester Research, reflects all of this. READ MORE >

As I See It: Get Ready to ROWE
by Victor Rozek

Each generation holds beliefs about work that are forged by time and place. Some are accepted without question, others are repeated with sufficient frequency that they become hard-coded in the collective consciousness. For example, people who lived through the Great Depression believed that nothing could be more important than having a job. READ MORE >