IBM i Dominates the CPW Capacity Budget
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

IBM has a tiered approach to processing capacity for Power Systems hardware using Power7 chips, with smaller machines costing a lot less per unit of capacity than midrange boxes, and enterprise capacity costing even more. As I showed in last week's issue, the difference in a unit of processing capacity is quite large across all the Power7 machines. READ MORE >

Sundry Power Systems and BladeCenter Announcements
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The timing was probably coincidental, or the result of some vestigial impulse to make announcements during the fall COMMON midrange user group meeting, but IBM late last week announced a slew of new high-end hardware disk arrays (which don't have much to do with most IBM i shops) and tweaked its Power Systems and BladeCenter lineup a bit. READ MORE >

.NET in the Midrange: Not Migration So Much As Integration
by Dan Burger

The fact that Microsoft is making an impact in IBM i shops is no shock. Sometimes the sparks fly and you can feel the electricity in the air though depending on who is doing the talking and what the listener wants or doesn't want to hear. Many of the AS/400 faithful bristle whenever Windows or .NET is mentioned, but you can't ignore the growing need to integrate these two systems. READ MORE >

As I See It: The Contrarian
by Victor Rozek

He could have easily become one of the disposable people. Born in Compton, he grew up in the shadowlands of the urban nightmare, in an area highjacked by gangs, drugs, and despair. He lost his best friend to street violence, and his family home to a predatory lender. His parents divorced. He started numerous failed businesses and, for a time he was homeless, living out of his car. READ MORE >