Timothy Prickett Morgan
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IBM Canada Jacks Up Maintenance Prices
April 2, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreRaising maintenance on older equipment is the time-tested way to help encourage customers to shell out some dough on new gear and at the same time compensate IT equipment and software makers for the increased costs of servicing hardware or applications. Last week, IBM‘s Canada unit raised maintenance on thousands of pieces of equipment.
In announcement letter 312-040, IBM said that it was raising both monthly and annual maintenance fees in the Great White North on specialized banking gear, all kinds of Power-based systems (both with the i and the p labels), xSeries and System x machinery, and
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IBM i Versus Oracle JDE Throwdown Redux
April 2, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreWhen looking at a complex problem on deadline, you rarely get everything right the first time, or do as thorough a job as you would like. My price/performance analysis of the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne “Day In The Life” benchmark test on various Oracle Sparc T and IBM Power Systems and System x iron is no exception. A reader with very intimate knowledge shared a little insight, and I added some more vectors to the comparison.
Hi, Timothy:
I just read your newsletter article today. It was very thorough as expected from you. I just had a comment to make.
We
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IBM’s Next Generation Platform Prepped For Launch
April 2, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreWhat IBM has been calling its “Next Generation Platform” internally and when talking to business partners that have been briefed in the past several weeks, and what it is calling “expert integrated systems” in its promotions appear to be a warm up for the launch event set for April 11. And it looks very similar in concept to the Flex Platform I caught wind of and told you about back in February.
There will be some bigwigs at IBM handling the NGP launch, which will take place in a webcast at 2 p.m. Eastern on April 11:
I
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Just When Do IBM i PTFs Get Applied, Anyway?
March 28, 2012 Hey, Joe
… Read moreOur management has our operators apply cumulative PTFs (CUME) with no regard to when the system will be IPLed. They load the CUME, and the system may not be IPLed until a few weeks later. The managers believe that no PTFs are applied until after the IPL. I think that some PTFs are applied immediately, while others wait for the IPL. What’s the real story on how PTFs are applied?
–Dave
This is an interesting question. For most shops, PTFs aren’t usually applied until you IPL the system. But in some situations, eligible CUME PTFs can be applied immediately, depending
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Down with Dependence!
March 28, 2012 Ted Holt
… Read moreACME Software has just released version 1.0 of the DWIM (Do What I Mean) utility. Placing the DWIM command in your CL programs (or calling the program counterpart from programs written in other languages) will solve all your problems, because the computer will stop doing what you tell it to do and do what you intended for it to do instead. Before you start adding calls to DWIM to your programs, you might want to ponder a few questions.
- What if ACME Software goes out of business and stops supporting DWIM?
- What if a competitor comes out with something even
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A Couple of RSE Quickies
March 28, 2012 Paul Tuohy
… Read moreBelieve it or not, there are a few features of RSE that I do not use on a daily basis. When working on my own system, my own projects, and my own development environment, I know where everything is and how to navigate it.
But (and I know you are going to find this hard to believe) there are some people who do not share my views on such things as where sources should be kept and, even more shockingly, I have to adapt to their standards when I am working on their systems. Is there no justice?
Here are
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Tell IBM All About Your Power Systems Iron
March 26, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreWe spend a lot of time here at IT Jungle poking around looking for interesting things to tell you about that relate either directly or obliquely to the IBM i platform. I stumbled across an interesting item the other day I wanted to make you aware of.
I am not sure how long IBM has been doing this, but the company is soliciting customers who use its Power Systems midrange servers and zEnterprise mainframe servers to have their voices heard and write a review for the iron that they use. IBM is also soliciting reviews for its Storwize V7000, DS8000,
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Oracle Software Rebounds, Hardware Struggles
March 26, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreOracle’s software business deflated a bit in its second quarter of fiscal 2012 ended back in November 2011, but software was on the rebound in the third quarter ended in February and the company remained hopeful about its long-term prospects in the systems business thanks to its “engineered systems” and despite its backing out of commodity server and storage sales that don’t make it any money.
In the quarter, which had an extra day in it thanks to leap year, Oracle’s revenues were up 3 percent, to just a hair over $9 billion. Of that, software license, update, and support
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Flashback: Clearly A Mainframe, Nearly The Perfect One
March 26, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreTFH
Back in September 1992, when the E95 quad-processor AS/400 came out and IBM was in the midst of a major reorganization as its mainframe business was imploding and Lou Gerstner was about six months away from being named the first outside CEO of Big Blue in its history, I jotted down a wish list of the things that I thought IBM needed to do to make the AS/400 a more general purpose platform.
Back then, The Four Hundred was only available as a paper newsletter on a subscription basis, so very few of you have ever read this wish
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Server Transitions Give Internal Storage Arrays Sales A Breather
March 26, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIn last week’s issue of The Four Hundred, I walked you through the latest statistics from Gartner regarding sales of external disk arrays. Gartner’s public information only covers outboard storage arrays, not the internal disk arrays that are still common among SMB customers. IDC‘s public data covers total storage array sales as well as external array sales, which means we can calculate what’s happening with internal arrays.
Let’s start with the broadest data and drill down from there. IDC reckons that in the fourth quarter, across all array types and no matter where they are located–under a server’s