Timothy Prickett Morgan
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Reader Feedback on Allowing IBM i and 5250 Licenses to Jump Hardware
August 16, 2010 Hey, TPM
… Read moreJust to fill in a few details on your article on the IBM i license transfer.
There has been a PRPQ around for years that allows a customer with P30s and above to transfer any IBM i license that is not considered part of the hardware (based on how the machine was originally ordered) from one machine to another within their enterprise.
What is new with this announcement was that it came out of the shadows and is now a “normal” feature that doesn’t require you to know someone in Rochester.
You can transfer from and to any 550/750 and
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IT Spending Projections for 2010 Boosted by Forrester
August 16, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreDespite the worries among some economists that the U.S. economy might be heading for a double-dip and Europe might be dragged back into recession by the faltering economies in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Ireland, the wizards at Forrester Research still think the prospects for the IT sector on a global basis are pretty good for 2010.
Andrew Bartels, who is a vice president and the principal analyst who builds the economic and IT spending models at Forrester, has put out a report saying that global IT spending will increase by 7.8 percent this year, hitting $2.46 trillion. IT spending
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Some Details and Thoughts About Impending Power7 Machines
August 16, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreWell, I put a gun to my own head two weeks ago and guessed that the Power 710 and 720 machines being launched tomorrow would have a single Power7 processor socket with 128 GB of memory and that their companion Power 730 and 740 machines would have two sockets with 256 GB of memory. I guessed wrong, and I know this because IBM briefed resellers last week ahead of the launch (slated for tomorrow morning) and people’s tongues are a-wagging.
As it turns out, the Power 710 and 730 servers are using a 2U chassis that has long been missing
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Power 750: Big Bang for Fewer Bucks Compared to Predecessors
August 16, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe Power 750 might have come to market first among the Power7-based machines, but it has taken me a bit longer than usual to cook up some comparative price/performance analysis for this midrange box, which was announced in February. I have done the work for comparisons between old and new Power blades and their alternatives in the Unix and Windows market (the two platforms that really matter for i shops), and now I will begin working my way up the product line and back down again when the entry Power7 machines (710, 720, 730, and 740) and the high-end Power7
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Admin Alert: Six Things You May Not Know About i/OS Passwords
August 11, 2010 Joe Hertvik
… Read moreThink you know everything about i/OS passwords? Here’s a list of six commonly missed aspects of iSeries, System i, and Power i passwords. If you’re a password pro, you may already be aware of three or more of these tips. If not, you may learn something that can help you enhance your i/OS password architecture.
6 Simple Tips for Better Password Management
1. Two system values can prevent your users from using actual words in their passwords–If you want to stop your users from entering passwords that contain complete words that can be easily hacked, try setting on The
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IBM Cuts Deals on Selected Network Switches
August 9, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreWhile The Four Hundred was on hiatus last week, IBM announced some pretty deep discounting on various networking products commonly used with its System x products, which are popular among the Power Systems base as well.
The deal, in announcement letter 310-229, applies to five different Ethernet switches resold by IBM. Under that deal, if you buy through IBM’s Web site or over the telephone, you get 30 percent shaved off the price. That is as good as most midrange shops were going to be able to negotiate on their own. Presumably IBM has some inventory it wants to
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Addition of i2 Drives JDA Software’s Growth in Q2
August 9, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIf it were not for a $246 million settlement in a Texas lawsuit relating to i2 Technologies prior to its acquisition by JDA Software, the retailing and supply software specialist would probably be popping champagne corks all over the boardroom in Scottsdale, Arizona. OK, maybe getting a few six packs of good beer, since sales were up but profits were not because of rising development costs and restructurings relating to the i2 acquisition.
In the second quarter, JDA’s overall revenues were up 59.2 percent, to $158.4 million, but $9.9 million in amortization of intangibles and $4.5 million in restructuring
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IBM Buys Storwize for Data Compression Smarts
August 9, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreBig Blue has never had much of a stomach for doing big acquisitions, but it sure does like to make a lot of little ones to beef up its software and services portfolio and to give its hardware some more code to run. And so IBM has shelled out an undisclosed sum to acquire Storwize, a maker of data compression appliances that front-end network storage and databases.
Storwize was founded in 2004 by Gal Naor, the company’s president and a former member of the Israeli intelligence force and an executive at ECtel, a Singapore telecom services company, and Jonathan
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SAP Bows to Oracle on TomorrowNow, Argues Damages
August 9, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe third-party support war–more of a skirmish now–between software giants SAP and Oracle continues to grind on, and last week, Oracle gained a few yards of turf. The new top brass at the German software company said in a pretrial filing in the Oracle vs. SAP lawsuit that was filed in March of 2007 that it would accept financial responsibility for any judgment against its former TomorrowNow unit.
TomorrowNow, you will remember, was established by some ex-PeopleSoft employees to provide third-party support for PeopleSoft applications, which was eventually expanded to cover Siebel Systems and JD Edwards software suites. Being a
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Let’s Take a Closer Look at IBM’s Systems and Technology Biz
August 9, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreI am not an insider at IBM nor one of the big IT consultancies that get help from Big Blue as they build their economic models of the server business each quarter when the system makers close out their successive quarters. For several years, I have built a model of IBM’s sales of mainframe, Power, and X64 server sales, and as the years go on, deviations in my model (which by necessity are not as solid as IBM’s own numbers) have made it diverge from IBM’s quarterly numbers. I am going to have to start from scratch and build a