It has been three and a half years since IBM started to dabble with user-based pricing on OS/400 V5R3 and almost three years to the day since Big Blue decided–and thank heavens–to institute modest licensing fees and user-based pricing for the i5/OS V5R4 operating system. With the launch of the Power7-based machines in February, that was the perfect time to make any changes to packaging and pricing for the i For Business platform.

The Power 750, 770, and 780 machines launched in February run i 6.1.1, and there was no mention of any pricing for the software stack in the

Three quarters of the X64 assault on the midrange server market have been deployed into the field, with last week’s launching of Intel‘s eight-core “Nehalem-EX” Xeon 7500s and Advanced Micro Devices‘s 12-core “Magny-Cours” Opteron 6100s. Three weeks ago, Intel put the six-core “Westmere-EP” Xeon 5600s out, and that only leaves the six-core “Lisbon” Opteron 4100s left to enter the price war battlefield sometime in the second quarter of this year.

As the X64 chip makers and their OEM server partners start firing away at each other to compete for server deals in this still rickety economy, it is

If you ask Greg Veal what platform is best for creating a data warehouse, he’ll tell you it’s whatever platform you are using for your operational data. For readers of The Four Hundred, that platform is the IBM AS/400, which is officially referred to as the Power System running IBM i these days. Veal is intimately familiar with the IBM i. His experience dates back to the System/32, but his ideas are thoroughly modern.

From the viewpoint of a consultant who specializes in data warehousing projects and works on those that are big enough to warrant the hiring of

Since its inception, the computer business has given customers better value year after year. Customers have responded by buying computers even faster than price/performance has improved. Give more, get more is a nice idea, but in fact the story is not quite that simple. Computing is a harsh competitive environment, ruthlessly Darwinian. The industry has survived many ups and downs, but the same cannot be said of its vendors or architectures. IBM may find that its server business has survived the recession only to be mortally threatened by economic recovery.

IBM has announced a range of Power7 servers for the

Rimini Street last week announced it has filed a counter claim against Oracle concerning Rimini’s third-party maintenance business for Oracle’s ERP and CRM applications, including many JD Edwards customers. Rimini’s lawsuit, which comes two months after Oracle sued Rimini for allegedly stealing protected support information and application code, alleges Oracle’s lawsuit is “baseless” and that the software giant has engaged in illegal and anti-competitive business tactics for the last five years.

Rimini says it filed the lawsuit to “vehemently deny” the “false and malicious allegations” Oracle made against Rimini in the January lawsuit, which you can read more about here

Finally RPG is back! After all these years of being relegated to boring OLTP programs, RPG and the AS/400 rock!

Now, when I send resumes, I include all the articles regarding Madoff and the 400, underscoring the creative use of RPG in the scheme.

I have had more offers in the last year than the last 20 years combined! HA! All you sniveling little Java, VB, PHP, and .NET programmers–who’s laughing now!

–TS

“And this probably makes O’Hara and Perez the two highest paid RPG programmers in history.”

Is it wrong to take perverse pride in this? I’m still laughing.

IBM i For Business enthusiasts led by Frank Soltis, Jeff Olen, Mike Pavlak, and nine software vendors are hopeful the iManifest U.S. project can still take flight. During a conference call last week, members decided to gather at the COMMON conference in Orlando next month to reinvigorate the program, which is designed to promote the i operating system as a thoroughly modern, extremely capable, and smarter alternative for running business applications.

Since taking shape in July 2009, iManifest has managed to gain only limited corporate support from the independent software vendors that are crucial to the organizations goals. The vendors

If you are thinking about upgrading the capability of the PowerVM hypervisor on your Power Systems box, IBM wants you to think a little bit faster and upgrade that key systems software now rather than waiting.

To that end, the company announced a special promotion last week in announcement letter 310-150 whereby it is giving customers who upgrade from whatever level of PowerVM they have to the next high level up a 15 or 20 percent discount off the upgrade fees. Specifically, the deal covers upgrades from PowerVM Express Edition (5765-PVX) to PowerVM Standard Edition (5765-PVS) or to PowerVM Enterprise

As the second-largest provider of application software in the world and now a server maker with aspirations of selling integrated systems, Oracle is now, by definition, a direct competitor to the AS/400 and its progeny. And how well or poorly it does, financially as well as technically, matters to i For Business shops. Because for a lot of the larger i shops that account for the bulk of the platform’s revenues these days, the next stop if they don’t continue to invest in IBM gear is a move to an Oracle platform.

While The Four Hundred was on hiatus, Oracle

Our good buddy, Dan Olds, over at Gabriel Consulting Group is looking for customers with X64 server to take part in his annual server survey, and he could use the assistance of readers of The Four Hundred.

Admit it. You have these Winders and Loonix boxes all over the place. They crop up like mold in an unclean bathroom, like mice in a barn, like clouds off the coast of Africa that come whipping across the Atlantic, causing untold damage.

Well, Gabriel Consulting wants to find out exactly what you think of those old X86 and newer X64 servers