Timothy Prickett Morgan
-
IBM Cuts Power Systems Shops a Linux Price Break
August 23, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreBig Blue has wanted you to run Linux and AIX on your OS/400 and i platforms for the better part of a decade now, and maybe you have and maybe you haven’t. Maybe Linux is now commercial enough that you feel like ditching Windows for certainly infrastructure and application serving jobs. If you do, and you have some latent capacity sitting around in your Power6, Power6+, and selected Power7 machines, then IBM has a deal for you.
In the Linux on Power Systems Capacity Upgrade on Demand offering, announced as part of the August 17 announcement blitz, which you can
-
IBM Makes i Solution Editions From Power 720 and 740 Servers
August 23, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreFor a bunch of years now, IBM and its key application software partners on the OS/400 and i platform have used special lower-cost iSeries, System i, and Power Systems machines called Solution Editions to make it more attractive for customers to buy new application software and put it on an OS/400 or i box rather than Windows or Linux. The new Power 720 and 740 4U rack servers have been added to the ranks of i Solution Edition machines.
The basic idea of the i Solution Edition machines is simple. Configurations of hardware and systems software are setup to support
-
The Power 795: Cheaper Performance, Expensive Software
August 23, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIn last week’s issue of Four Hundred Stuff, I gave you the basic feeds and speeds of the top-end, Power7-based Power 795 server that was announced on August 17 by IBM. At the time of writing, lots of the feeds and speeds for the machine as well as its pricing were not yet available, so let’s circle back and fill in some of the blanks.
You can see our original coverage of the Power 795 system here, but here’s a brief recap. The Power 795 has eight processor books, each with four processor sockets. One variant of
-
BladeCenter S Express i Edition Gets a Power7 Upgrade
August 23, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreSince May 2008, IBM has been bundling up different configurations of its Power6-based blade servers with the i5/OS V5R4 and i 6.1 operating system, a slew of features, and giving the whole shebang a discounted price that puts a blade-based i setup closer to the price of an entry Power 520 rack or tower server that is the workhorse of the i market. As part of last week’s Power7 entry and high-end server rollouts, this i Edition Express for BladeCenter S configuration was tweaked to include Power7 blades.
As was the case with the prior i Edition bundles on the
-
IBM Ducks i Pricing on Most Entry Power7 Servers
August 23, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreLast week, I gave you the first pass analysis of the four new entry Power7-based servers from IBM in our Four Hundred Stuff newsletter on announcement day. This week, in The Four Hundred, I will drill down into the Power 710, 720, 730, and 740 servers, giving you some of the pricing information that was missing when we went to press on August 17.
For all the feeds and speeds, read the original announcement story here. To recap briefly, the Power 710 and Power 730 are 2U machines that come in a rack format only with one or
-
IBM Quintuples Performance with the Power 795
August 17, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe big, bad box of the Power7 lineup rolls out onto the floor today, and it just might sag a little bit. The Power 795, as the top-of-the-line Power Systems server is called, crams up to 256 cores and 1,024 threads into a single system image backed by 8 TB of shared memory in which applications can frolic. The Power 795 has four times cores and roughly five times the raw processing capacity as the top-end Power 595 machine that dates from the summer of 2008 and that was looking a bit long in the tooth.
Like its Power 595
-
IBM Rounds Out Entry Power7 Server Lineup
August 17, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreToday, as expected, the AS/400, iSeries, and System i customer base is finally getting some machinery that is better suited to their needs and budgets than the larger Power7 rack and tower systems that IBM announced in February. And, given how relatively few OS/400 and IBM i shops deploy blade servers, the new Power 710, 720, 730, and 740 machines that debut today are also going to be a better fit than the new BladeCenter PS700, PS701, and PS702 blades that came out in April.
As I have explained in past issues of The Four Hundred newsletter, IBM had not
-
Unica Snapped Up By Big Blue for $480 Million
August 16, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIf you thought that IBM was not in the application software business, you are wrong. It is just not in the ERP and related software businesses, but Big Blue most certainly is interested in boosting its software portfolio and therefore its revenues and profits. And to that end, IBM last week snapped up another software company in the e-commerce space, called Unica, for a stunning $480 million.
Unica is a public company that specializes in interactive marketing, something that Big Blue itself sure could use a little help with–particularly when it comes to the
AS/400iSeriesSystem iPower -
Arrow Rebounds in Second Quarter, Buys Into Unified Comms
August 16, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreAs we report elsewhere in The Four Hundred, the IT and electronics components distribution businesses seem to be on the mend with master reseller Avnet showing a sharp rise in revenues and a return to profits. Rival Arrow Electronics has just turned in a decent quarter as well, and is buying its way into the expanding unified communications business.
In its second quarter ended July 3, Arrow brought in $4.61 billion in revenues, up 36 percent, and even with $5.6 million in restructuring costs was able to bring $116.2 million to the bottom line, up by nearly a factor
-
Avnet Bounces in Q4 Thanks to V-Shaped IT Recovery
August 16, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe economic meltdown put system and electronic component sales on a sharp decline, and as far as master distributor Avnet is concerned, these two markets have bounced back as the company closed out its fiscal 2010.
In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010 ended July 3, Avnet posted $5.21 billion in total revenues, up 38.5 percent from the year-ago period. The big boost in revenues helped Avnet swing from a $30.9 million loss in Q4 of fiscal 2009 to a $141.1 million profit this time around.
“The V-shaped cyclical recovery in the technology markets we serve continued this quarter, with