As some of you know, IBM hosted two Power Systems Technical Universities in Chicago last week–one for i nerds and the other for AIX and Linux techies. As we went to press with this issue of the newsletter, some news was beginning to filter back into the cosmic ether–OK, really my email and my telephone, nothing cosmic about it–about what IBM is telling the i crowd. There’s nothing earth shattering so far, but some interesting points.

First, the Virtual I/O Server that, as the name suggests, virtualizes disk, tape, and networking I/O for JS12 and JS22 blade servers running the

In last week’s issue of The Four Hundred, I did the first in a series of articles comparing the Power Systems i Edition platform to other competitive platforms. In that case, I compared entry Power 520 rack servers and JS12 blade servers in the new BladeCenter S chassis to ProLiant alternatives running Windows from Hewlett-Packard. I was gratified to see that the i platforms were absolutely competitive with the Windows iron, at least when comparing machines with system software suitable for online transaction processing.

This week, I am not as happy, since the Power 550 M50 machines, thanks

Like many of you who have been in the IT industry for a few decades, I watch the ebb and flow of IT spending as IT budgets meet the hard realities or thrilling exuberance of the business environments in particular industries and geographies. With the steady stream of bad economic news–I do not need to get into the litany, since I know all readers of The Four Hundred are informed citizens of the world–it is no surprise we are as jumpy as the economies we participate in. And, IT spending, according to a recent study from Forrester Research, reflects

Each generation holds beliefs about work that are forged by time and place. Some are accepted without question, others are repeated with sufficient frequency that they become hard-coded in the collective consciousness. For example, people who lived through the Great Depression believed that nothing could be more important than having a job.

As the Depression gave way to the post war economic ramp-up, people were able to secure a single job that spanned an entire career. But when the pace of prosperity quickened, people came to believe that job-hopping was the way to accelerate their earning potential. By the time

Big Blue last week put a new version of its WebSphere Application Server middleware, V7.0 to be specific, into the field for its various server platforms and for those of several of its competitors. In addition to the updated WebSphere middleware, which has a cornucopia of Java enhancements and all the Web 2.0 buzzwords you can stomach, IBM announced its companion set of freebie extensions for WebSphere, called Web Enablement for i, at the V7.0 level as well.

With WebSphere Application Server V7.0, IBM is delivering full support for the Java EE 5 standard and has certified that it has

Some stories are harder to write than others, and this one will go down as one of the most difficult stories that I have had to do in a long time. No life, no career, and no company is without its risks and challenges, and every person or organization has to continually assess what is going on around them and deal with what is while keeping an eye on whatever dreams and plans they might have. And so it has been for myself and my team with regard to the IT Jungle.

My team and I came together in our

Server maker IBM and one of its two key master resellers, Arrow Electronics, have joined forces to try to take a concerted effort to push servers and storage into SMB shops into Poland.

The deal, which involves the Enterprise Computing Solutions group at Arrow and IBM’s Power Systems division, allows Arrow ESC to peddle the full Power Systems i Edition and AIX and Linux Edition machines, as well as their System i and System p predecessors (which is important for upgrade deals) into Poland through a reseller channel. Arrow, you will remember, significantly expanded its presence in Europe back

While certain parts of the server market in specific geographies have been hit by economic pressures, price competition, and deal deferrals in recent months, thus putting downward pressure on shipment and revenue growth in the server space, disk arrays and related storage software have thus far been growing like everything is still right with the world. The second quarter, according to the analysts at IDC, was another good one for disk array makers.

IDC reckons that external disk array sales rose by 16.7 percent in Q2, hitting $5.1 billion, and that total disk sales rose by a more modest

If you like the ERP software created by Swedish company International Business Systems but you don’t want to mess around with supporting the systems that run it, then IBS has an interesting services partner for you: Volvo IT, the IT services arm of the Swedish car maker of the same name.

Last week, IBS, one of the few remaining free-standing ERP software makers that has a strong presence in the OS/400, i5/OS, and i platform, announced that it has tapped fellow countryman Volvo IT to provide operational support services for the IBS ERP suite. Volvo IT is to Volvo as

IBM wants small and medium businesses to adopt the blade server form factor, but the storage options available for blades are not really appropriate for SMB shops. On-blade disk capacity is limited to one or two drives, which means the blade cannot support lots of file capacity and certainly is inappropriate for supporting anything but the most ridiculously modest level of online transaction processing; and storage area networking is well beyond the budget of SMB shops, and a bit like killing a gnat with a cast iron frying pan.

This is one reason why IBM has announced a SAS module