I don’t own any IBM stock, and you probably don’t either. (Well, we probably do by virtue of the index funds most of us have at least a taste of in our 401(k) and IRA funds. But that doesn’t count.) So you might be thinking that the annual IBM Investor Day event didn’t really concern those of us who care about IBM’s system platforms. On the contrary. The annual event is one of the few times when all of IBM’s top brass are present and speaking their minds about the future.

Including Sam Palmisano, Big Blue’s president, chief executive officer,

Server consolidation has been on the minds of IBM executives for years. It’s been talked about like it’s some kind of big deal since almost 10 years BC. (That’s Before Convergence.) Usually it’s been described as a top priority for companies with multiple AS/400 boxes spread across wide geographic areas. During these virtualized times, when the X64 server farms are catching on to this technology, it’s appropriate to take a closer look at what virtualization brings to the i platform.

First of all, it really has been a pretty big deal–at least in the higher end shops where the bigger

The computer industry is desperately in need of Goldilocks goods and services in these bearish times, things that are not too big and not too small, things that are just right. Can there actually be such offerings when there’s not just one kind of customer, and when industry folk and pundits alike say business conditions are bad and getting worse? Some people think the answer is yes. These are the hardware, software, and services vendors behind those little computers called netbooks. In addition, there is another constituency: People who are buying these things by the millions.

Once upon a time,

Big Blue’s April Power Systems announcements hit just after IBM filed its financial results for the first quarter of 2009, and I have been too distracted by going through the announcements to do my quarterly analysis of the company’s server sales. I took some time on Saturday morning, plus some Advil and a whole lot of coffee, and came up with some revenue figures for IBM’s server and storage lines that fit the skinny bit of data IBM gives about sales each quarter.

This is a maddening process, since each successive quarter of data reveals a bad assumption made in

IBM and its software business partners are putting the new Power6+ versions of the Power Systems i boxes announced on April 28 through the paces, and benchmark results are starting to come out.

So far, I have been able to get my hands on some benchmarks coming out of SAP and Lawson, and it is debatable how useful these tests are considering the lack of comparative benchmarks available for other platforms. (And yes, IBM does this on purpose just to confound anyone trying to do such comparisons.) The benchmark tests are nonetheless useful if you want to do some

As part of the April 28 Power System i product line enhancements, IBM has decided to cut the memory, disk, and processor prices on selected models of its Power Systems lineup.

It is hard to say for sure what IBM’s thinking is whenever it cuts prices, but there is little doubt in my mind that Big Blue is feeling the competitive pressure from Intel‘s “Nehalem EP” Xeon 5500 servers, which compete head-to-head against the Power 520 and Power 550 machines as well as their analogues in the Power blade lineup, the JS12, JS22, JS23, and JS43.

Not every machine

With Power6+ systems in the market and Power7 machinery slated for next year, and with IBM’s supply chain expert (Bob Moffatt) in charge of its Systems and Technology Group, you can’t expect older gear to stay in the product line for very long.

And so it comes as little surprise that IBM is already starting to wind down some Power6 iron. As part of the April 28 announcements, IBM said that starting July 1 it would stop selling 4.2 GHz Power6 processor boards and processor activations for them inside the original Power 570 server announced in the summer of 2007.

Sort of like a neighborhood within a city, IBM‘s developerWorks is a community within a community. It’s the locale, sort of like the local watering hole for the herds of thirsty developers seeking technical resources and answers to a spaghetti dish of gnarly conundrums. It’s an online source with a huge amount of content–from published articles to technology updates to individual experiences and expert commentary. It is shared through libraries, blogs, and forums. And now it is adapting to the social networking trend that IBM is certain will build on developerWorks’ already considerable success.

The old developerWorks is becoming

Last week there was chatter, once again, about either IBM or Microsoft acquiring software giant SAP. And both companies picked a different media outlet to shoot the rumors down.

Steve Mills, the general manager of IBM’s Software Group, spoke to Fortune and tried to quash the recurring rumors, saying that Big Blue has “consistently shied away from going deep into the applications space” and that the company did not intend to change that strategy. Which could turn out to be one of the stupidest strategies that IBM has, now that Oracle is shelling out $5.6 billion to buy Sun