The Hundred Thousand Plus on the Four Hundred
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

How big and healthy is the base of customers for the IBM i operating system and its related Power Systems platform? Those are two questions that are very difficult to get answers to except in very special moments when some IBMer somewhere makes a slip of the tongue--or intentionally lets the data out to try to comfort the multitudes in AS/400 Land. Depending on how you want to look at it, the latest numbers tossed around by IBM can be chilling or comforting. READ MORE >

IBM Launches Power7-Based Cloudy Stacks
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Last summer, when IBM launched its first CloudBurst virtualized private cloud infrastructure stacks, they were built on its BladeCenter blade servers and used the company's Xeon-based HS22 blades. Last week, as Big Blue updated the X64 variants of the CloudBurst stacks, it rolled out the first versions of the cloudy infrastructure based on Power7 processors. But instead of using its PS700 or PS701 blade servers, IBM chose the workhorse Power 750 server as the building block. READ MORE >

No Shortcuts to Program Conversions, OS Upgrades
by Dan Burger

Somewhere someone is about to take a stab at upgrading an IBM i operating system to version 6.1 or 7.1. The probability of mistakes being made is pretty high. The trouble resulting from those mistakes will range from easily correctable to call in the cavalry. The difference can be nailed down to two factors: poor preparation and too little time allotted for completion. Yes, we're talking about program conversion, which often has more bark than bite. READ MORE >

Mad Dog 21/21: Any Cloud Platform You Want, As Long As It's X64
by Hesh Wiener

Henry Ford started selling Model T cars in 1908 at $825 a pop. Ten years later the price had come down to $360, and every one made was the same color. As Henry Ford said, Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black. Despite this lack of variety, the Model T accounted for half the cars in the USA. Today, Henry Ford might not make cars; he might build machines for cloud computing, where he could tell customers to take an X64 or take a hike. READ MORE >