Timothy Prickett Morgan
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IBM, Oracle to Build on i Solution Edition Momentum
March 21, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreHere’s some welcome good news for the IBM i marketplace: Big Blue has closed its best quarter ever in the history of doing Solution Edition bundles for iSeries, System i, and Power Systems machines running OS/400 and i operating systems. The uptick was no doubt enabled by the better price/performance that the Power7-based machines offer, the price breaks IBM is offering for Solution Edition software licenses and hardware configurations, and wider participation of and enthusiasm from ISV partners.
As IT Jungle previously reported in our Four Hundred Stuff newsletter back in January, the fourth quarter was expected to be a
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IBM Hikes Maintenance Fees on Power-Based Gear
March 21, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreWell, you could probably see this one coming from about a zillion light years away. Last week, IBM warned customers that it was going to raise monthly and annual maintenance fees on a slew of hardware, including a raft of vintage AS/400 and RS/600 machines as well as more recent iSeries and pSeries gear, System i and System p iron, and even some earlier generations of the Power Systems lineup.
Basically, the message is exactly what you would expect it to be: move up to Power7-based machines and save a bunch of money on hardware maintenance fees.
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Admin Alert: Corralling i/OS Storage Hogs, Part 2
March 16, 2011 Joe Hertvik
… Read moreLast week, I published part 1 of my series detailing the seven biggest culprits of unnecessary i/OS storage consumption. This week, let’s continue with the remainder of my list and see what you can do to keep your storage problems under control.
Again, the Seven Sinister Storage Hogs
While not inclusive of all the ways processes can consume disk on your machine, I usually focus my attention on the big seven culprits of unnecessary storage consumption when an issue appears on one of my iSeries, System i, or Power i systems.
- Excessive spooled files and other system objects
- Walking Dead
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Duplicating CPYF Function Using SQL
March 16, 2011 Skip Marchesani
… Read moreThere are a few questions that I am frequently asked re: SQL that are interrelated. First, can SQL be used to duplicate the function found in the native CPFY (copy file) command? Next, can SQL be used to duplicate a table similar to the function found in the native CRTDUPOBJ (create duplicate object) command? And lastly, can a field reference file be used as the source for column definitions with the CREATE TABLE SQL statement? The answer is a qualified YES to all three questions, and it is relatively easy to do.
From a SQL perspective, I break the CPYF
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When Disaster Strikes: Maxava Discusses the Christchurch Earthquake
March 15, 2011 Simon O'Sullivan
… Read moreEditor’s Note: This story was written by Maxava and submitted to IT Jungle less than two weeks after a magnitude 6.3 earthquake on February 22 caused extensive damage and killed at least 160 people in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. Little did anyone know that northeast Japan would be hit by an even more devastating earthquake and tsunami on March 11. Our hearts go out to the survivors and emergency responders involved in both disasters.
When IT managers and executive management discuss the concept of risk management and disaster recovery, each side has a different opinion of what constitutes
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Disk Array Revenues and Capacity March On, Unabated
March 14, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreYou’re gonna have to face it, you’re addicted to LUNs. Well, in the case of the OS/400 and i platform, auxiliary storage pools, but that doesn’t scan well.
According to the people who count bits and bytes and boxes at IDC, companies consumed a staggering 5,127 petabytes of disk storage in the fourth quarter, up 55.7 percent from the year-ago period. Revenues only grew by 14.3 percent to $8.3 billion in the quarter, kept in check by competition and Moore’s Law. But just barely.
Those figures include both internal and external disk arrays. External disk array sales
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Western Digital Buys Hiatchi Disk Biz for $4.3 Billion
March 14, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe disk drive business created by IBM in 1956, which found itself sold to Hitachi back in June 2002, has a new home: Western Digital.
Under the deal announced last week, Western Digital is paying $3.5 billion in cash and $750 million in stock to acquire Hitachi Global Storage Technology. That will give parent company Hitachi a 10 percent stake in Western Digital when the deal is done. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of this year.
While solid state drives (SSDs) and other kinds of flash memory are making all the headlines
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No More Power Systems Quick Ship; IBM Has a Better Way
March 14, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreLinda Sanford, senior vice president for enterprise transformation at IBM, is in the prowl to wring $8 billion out of IBM’s internal cost base to do business. And many of the things that Sanford and her team will be doing to change the way IBM works internally and with outside partners and customers are going to affect you.
Sometimes, it will be for the better. And Sanford gave an example of an improvement that is also saving Big Blue a little money at last week’s Investor Day, held at the TJ Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York.
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IBM Lays Out Plans for Future Growth and Profits
March 14, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIt’s not every day that I get invited up to IBM Country up north of me to spend the day with the top 20 executives at Big Blue. In fact, it was only last Tuesday. So I decided to go, despite the flooding on the local roads between where I live in upstate Manhattan and IBM’s TJ Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights. My faithful rented Zipcar and a general sense of direction got me where I was going despite the road closures, and the highlight for me was meeting some of the techies who work at IBM Research, including
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Infor Makes a $1.83 Billion Bid for Lawson
March 14, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreWith rumors going around early last week that it had hired Barclays Capital to advise it on its options, midrange application software supplier Lawson Software finally fessed up that late on Friday night that something was indeed afoot. The Barclays Capital rumor had caused an 18 percent run-up in the company’s stock and that was because everyone figured that it was because the software maker was looking at buying something or selling itself.
As it turns out, it was the latter, not the former. In a statement released at 9:30 p.m. Eastern on Friday, Lawson said that it had received