State of the System i: First-Hand Reports from Second-Hand Dealers
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

While few people think about it, much less talk about it, some of the things that make any data center-class computer system worth the extra money that companies shell out for them include the fact that they last for a long time without breaking and their components hold economic value for a lot longer than cheaper commodity iron. It is not unheard of for a mainframe or midrange server to run without any problems for a decade, particularly among companies with steady or only modestly growing workloads. READ MORE >

System i Sales Drop Again in Q3, IBM Says Little
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Another financial quarter's results have been reported by IBM, and it is yet again another quarter of revenue declines for the i5/OS platform. With a Power6 refresh of the System i and System p lines not in the works until early next year--the latest rumor is that the high-end System p boxes have now slipped into 2008--it is hard to imagine that the fourth quarter will be any better for the System i than the third quarter was. Which is probably why IBM's chief financial officer, Mark Loughridge, didn't say too much about the System i in his conference call with Wall Street last week. READ MORE >

IBM Hit by Financial Services Slowdown in Q3
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Financial services companies, particularly among large enterprises based in the United States, slammed the brakes on IT spending in the third quarter and nearly gave IBM a financial haircut. Thanks to very strong bookings in past quarters for services that were delivered between July and September and to the continually weakening U.S. dollar, IBM's financial cookies were saved despite the weakness in the financial services sector. IBM's sales were up 6.6 percent to $24.1 billion and net income rose by 6.3 percent to $2.4 billion; earnings per share, thanks to an accelerated share repurchasing funded by debt earlier this year, rose by 15.9 percent to $1.68 per share. READ MORE >

Mad Dog 21/21: Symphony for the Devil
by Hesh Wiener

Symphony is what IBM calls its collection of free (as in free beer) productivity applications based on free (as in free speech) OpenOffice code. IBM has given its OpenOffice distro a recycled brand name and put it to work as a printer's devil for its Lotus Notes client and Domino collaboration and publishing server. But IBM is giving away ice in the winter. You don't need IBM to get OpenOffice, and, besides, productivity applications are headed for the Web or, as Sun Microsystems said before the Dot Com Crash wiped the smile off its overbite, the network is the computer. READ MORE >