New System i 525 Solution Editions Debut, 570 Gets Tweaked
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The Solution Editions of the System i product line have come full circle. Originally, the iSeries and System i5 Solution Edition machines were variants on regular Express configurations with OS/400 or i5/OS Enterprise Edition or Standard Edition that were preconfigured to support a reasonable number of users of popular ERP software for the platform. Then, in October 2006, IBM tested out the idea of user-based software pricing with special i5 520 Solution Edition machines. Last week, the user-priced System i5 525 was converted back to a Solution Edition for Oracle and SAP suites. READ MORE >

IBM Adds Web Services and SOA Tools to the System i
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

In case you missed it, IBM's Software Group is very big on applications built using Web services and adhering to a services oriented architecture (SOA). And, as the largest supplier of legacy applications running on mainframe and i5/OS and OS/400 platforms, and a big supplier of Windows and Unix platforms (which also have their own legacy issues when it comes to interfacing with the Web), this all stands to reason. IBM's SOA strategy is as simple as it is predictable--add another layer of abstraction atop of legacy platforms, exposing their fields and data streams as services, and then allow companies to weave them together in new ways. READ MORE >

Zend Puts Out New Release of Commercial-Grade PHP
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The third annual ZendCon conference for PHP programmers and vendors of PHP-related products was held in Cupertino, California, last week, and Zend Technology, the creator and maintainer of the open source PHP language and runtime tools, is using the event as a springboard for its new Zend Core 2.5 product, which includes development tools and runtime environments for specific platforms. Zend also announced the "Neon" beta release of Zend Studio for Eclipse as well as various integrations with products from IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle. READ MORE >

AS/400s Are From Rochester, RS/6000s Are From Austin
by Doug Mewmaw

Last week, I did something that I never thought would happen in my IT life. I am a 19-year AS/400-iSeries-System i veteran, and I had the pleasure of attending my first ever System p Technical Conference, which was hosted in San Antonio, Texas. After one week of sessions and talking with my fellow conference attendees, my wife texted me and asked about the conference. My text messages are normally very wordy, as I admit I'm a bit old fashioned. I think I shocked my wife with this simple response: 'OMG--I am in another world.' READ MORE >