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IBM's eServer p5 "Squadron" Server Announcements Loom

The word on the street is that IBM will launch the Power5-based "Squadron" servers sometime within the next few weeks. The original rumors in the aftermath of the eServer i5 variants of the Squadron boxes, which support OS/400 as their primary operating system as well as Linux and now AIX within logical partitions, were that IBM would try to get the entry and midrange Squadron boxes to market sometime in late July or early August. Apparently, the new eServer p5 520 (two-way), 550 (four-way), and 570 (16-way) machines may hit the street a little bit sooner. IBM would not comment on future pSeries Unix server announcements when asked about the rumors.

Disk Array Sales Up 6.5% in First Quarter, Says IDC

According to market research performed by IDC, the worldwide external disk array market surged 6.5 percent to hit $3.5 billion in sales in the first quarter of 2004. Total disk sales (including internal arrays) grew more modestly at a rate of 3.5 percent, to $5.1 billion, which suggests that the market is shifting away from internal disks to external units. This is ironic, given that the shift to internal systems began about a decade ago as vendors tried to keep account control by integrating disk arrays with their servers. In terms of total disk storage sold, Hewlett-Packard was the dominant seller, with $1.2 billion in sales, but its revenues were down 6.1 percent. IBM was second in the IDC ranking, with just over $1 billion in sales, with revenues up 11.2 percent. As external arrays are taking off again, EMC's share of the market went up 26 percent, to $707 million. Dell and Hitachi had $351 million and $348 million respectively in disk sales in the first quarter. Sun was number six, with $309 million, while all other vendors together accounted for $1.2 billion in sales, or 23.3 percent of the market.

Like, No Kidding: IT Morale Is Low

IT consultancy META Group has just finished putting together its "2004 IT Staffing and Compensation Guide," and Maria Shafer, author of the study, says that low morale in IT shops is reaching a critical point. As we all know, this whole "do more with less" approach to IT (indeed across all businesses) has put a lot of strain on work and home relationships. Offshoring and outsourcing, the uncertainty of the business environment, and heavy workloads are all contributing to morale issues. Of the 650 companies that META surveyed for the study, 72 percent said that low IT employee morale is a serious issue. To that end, 45 percent of those companies have begun implementing employee recognition programs (if you can't give money, give praise), and another 40 percent have given employees a chance to get some training to boost their moral as well as their skills (this thing tends to cut both ways). Only 4 percent of companies surveyed are giving cash incentives to demonstrate the value of the IT employees to the company.

Apple Previews "Tiger" Mac OS X Unix Variant

Apple is hosting its annual developer conference in San Francisco this week, and used the occasion to preview its upcoming "Tiger" Mac OS X variant of the Unix operating system for its desktops and servers. Mac OS 10.4, as the release is called, is expected to ship in the first half of 2005. And while the new Spotlight search engine and Dashboard system control program embedded into Mac OS (among another 200 other new features) are going to be interesting counterpoints to what Microsoft will be doing with the next service pack for Windows XP and the future "Longhorn" client, the server improvements with Tiger are what are important to us.

The Tiger release of Mac OS X Server is the fifth release of OS X, which is based on a variant of the FreeBSD Unix kernel that had been open-sourced after Apple modified it. The updated server program will have expanded support for the 64-bit applications that are engendered by the PowerPC 970 processors, at the heart of the G5 Xserve servers from Apple. As is the case on other PowerPC and Power machines from IBM, the PowerPC 970 can support 32- and 64-bit applications side-by-side within the same operating system and running in native mode. The Tiger server will also include Weblog Server, a variant of the open-source Blojsom Weblog server that has been integrated with the operating system (including Kerberos authentication and LDAP directory support). Weblog Server supports the RSS protocol for news feeds. Tiger Server will also include an iChat instant messaging server (which is compatible with the open-source Jabber IM client) as well as Apple's first grid computing software, Xgrid 1.0. The Tiger Server will cost $499 for a 10-user license per server, and $999 per server for an unlimited user license. This is roughly in line with the cost of a Unix license on an entry server.

Oracle to Support JDeveloper, 10g Database on Mac OS X

In conjunction with the preview of the next release of Mac OS X for desktops and servers, Apple and database maker Oracle announced last week that Oracle's JDeveloper Java development tool and its Oracle 10g database would be available on Mac OS X. Before the end of the year, Oracle says, it will have its JDeveloper tool and Oracle 10g available as a free download for Mac OS X. Customers already registered as members of the Oracle Technology Network can get a free early-adopters release of Oracle 10g for Mac OS X.

Support for Oracle 10g is important as Apple tries to push its Unix-based Mac OS X into more traditional businesses. While Macs have long been the popular platform in certain media industries, they are not usually the back-end accounting systems at these companies. By moving to Mac OS to a Unix kernel and getting support of databases like Oracle 10g, Apple hopes to expand its market share among the Mac faithful, and maybe even get a little new business, too. It doesn't hurt that Apple's Xserve servers also offer pretty good performance. By the way, Oracle 9i has been supported on Mac OS X since last August.

FreeBSD Gets the Nod from IEEE, Open Group on POSIX

The FreeBSD Project, which manages the FreeBSD variants of the Unix operating system for X86, Power, Sparc, and Alpha processors, announced last week that it has been given permission by the IEEE Standards Association, which controls some 870 IT standards, and Open Group, which controls the Unix brand and the Single Unix Specification, to make use of the POSIX features of Unix. POSIX, which is short for Portable Operating System Interface, is part of the Version 3 spec for Unix. You can't say you are POSIX-compliant without the Open Group's blessing. The Open Group and IEEE have given FreeBSD permission to use any material (including code, documentation, and utilities) for over 1,400 POSIX interfaces. With this permission, FreeBSD can become POSIX-compliant, which will enable applications running on other Unix platforms, and that adhere to POSIX, to be more easily ported to FreeBSD. The FreeBSD Project began looking at establishing POSIX compliance for FreeBSD in October 2001, and developers have been working at a steady pace to reach that goal.

USENIX Gives Unix Creator McIlroy Lifetime Achievement Award