The Little Power7 Engines That Could--And Those That Won't
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The System/38 languished as an exotic and expensive box through most of the 1980s and the System/36 entry systems sold like hot cakes a few years later, and that experience taught IBM two lessons that were embodied in the first AS/400s from 1988 and continue to be the hallmark of Big Blue's midrange systems today, regardless of their processor architecture. The first is that it is necessary to have as broad a selection of systems as can be affordably designed and manufactured, and the second is that you can always charge a premium for more performance and greater scalability. READ MORE >

DB2 on i: The Time, Money, and Risk of Modernization
by Dan Burger

You are sitting on a gold mine of database technology and probably don't even know it. You have many of the essential pieces undiscovered in your existing system. Untapped capabilities in DB2 for i, the integrated relational database at the heart of IBM i 6.1 and 7.1, can be put to use meeting business requirements that have executives nervously searching for answers. Your first discovery is that a database does far more than store information. Take a closer look at what you have here. READ MORE >

IBM Buys Blade Network to Control Ethernet Switches
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The buying spree at IBM continued again last week, as the company spun the acquisition wheel of fortune and landed on blade and rack Ethernet switch maker Blade Network Technologies for what is rumored to be $400 million in cash. The deal marks the re-entry of Big Blue to the networking business--if you don't count the OEM agreements with Blade Network, Juniper Networks, and Brocade Communications and the reseller agreement with Cisco Systems. READ MORE >

Mad Dog 21/21: Built Like a BRIC's IT House
by Hesh Wiener

When a country spends more on computing, its economic growth is likely to be healthier--so Gartner says in its most recent discussion of IT spending in the BRIC countries. Gartner made this declaration at its most recent dog-and-pony show in Sao Paolo during mid-September. Brazil leads the BRIC countries and possibly the world in the portion of gross domestic product (GDP) it pumps into computing and its pace of spending on IT will grow during the next few years. The laggard BRIC, it turns out, is Russia. READ MORE >