I am running out of time to pitch the rest of my theoretical and completely hypothetical System iWant, 2010 Edition, machines, with the initial Power7-based Power Systems launch due in February. The current rumor has it that IBM will roll out an entry Power 520-class machine in the next two weeks, but I have obviously not been able to confirm that with Big Blue. What I do know for sure is that IBM has to do a better job with entry Power Systems and that the company knows this.

With the exception of some special packaging of software on entry

The IBM i/OS-based Power Systems server has more than a 40 percent lower total cost of ownership (TCO) over the course of three years compared to similar Windows and Linux servers, according to a new International Technology Group (ITG) study released this month by IBM. The 34-page report, which used real-world configuration data to outfit hypothetical business computers, is the latest in a line of ITG reports that try to quantify the System i advantages.

For its IBM report, which is titled Value Proposition for IBM Power Systems Servers and IBM i: Minimizing Costs and Risks for Midsize Businesses,

So when does open source software become mainstream in IBM Power Systems i environments? It’s fair to say that mainstream is not even close to an accurate description today. But don’t think it’s disappearing from the radar screen. More people are discovering open source software, and you should expect this frontier to be well traveled sooner rather than later. Larry Augustin, chief executive officer at SugarCRM and open source frontiersman, uses the term “safe bet” to describe enterprise open source software at the dawn of 2010.

Software reliability, in general, has been widely questioned. And open source software has been

Microsoft‘s net income during its second fiscal quarter, the calendar’s fourth, was up by a stunning 60 percent. The company’s revelation showed net income of $6.66 billion on sales of $19.02 billion; a third of Microsoft’s intake went to the bottom line. By way of comparison, IBM earned $4.81 billion, or 17.7 percent of its $27.23 billion in revenue, nearly half of it from software that accounted for a quarter of Big Blue’s intake. Microsoft’s success was even more concentrated. A third of its revenue and five-eighths of its profit came from Windows for PCs.

The good news is

I know it is hard to believe, but Oracle, which is now a systems provider thanks to the $7.4 billion acquisition of the former Sun Microsystems, actually wasn’t kidding when it said it wanted to be in the systems business. Forget that Oracle was really only initially interested, according to rumors, in Java and Solaris. Somewhere, the top brass at Oracle came to the conclusion that maybe getting into hardware might be the right move after all. And emulating IBM–the Big Blue that dominated the early years of commercial computing, not the services-obsessed behemoth you know today–was the

Craig Johnson, one of the two co-product managers of the Power Systems i platform at IBM, died tragically in a 39-car pile up during a blizzard on Interstate 35 near Latimer, Iowa, last Monday. He was 51.

According to the obituary in the Rochester Post-Bulletin, the local paper in Rochester, Minnesota, where Johnson worked on the i/OS platform, he and his wife, Kathleen, who also works for IBM, were in the accident. Johnson exited the car to assist his injured wife and was struck by another vehicle. According to another report in the paper, the Iowa State Patrol

Local user groups dedicated to the IBM i and Power Systems could use a stimulus program. But please don’t ask the government for money. Big Blue, this is on you.

This little rant was stimulated by the emaciation of local user groups in Florida. Both the Central Florida Midrange User Group (CFMUG) based in Orlando and the Data Exchange Bay Area User’s Group (DEBUG) based in Tampa/St. Petersburg have scaled back to only two or three meetings per year and are hanging by a thread. Jacksonville, which once was home to the Jax iSeries User Group, is no longer on

As I do each quarter two weeks after IBM reports its financial results, I diced and sliced and mished and mashed up the facts and figures that Big Blue presents to give investors an idea of how its systems business is doing. The fact is, it could have done worse, considering how many product transitions the company is juggling.

As I speculated three months ago when analyzing IBM’s third quarter results, there was no way, given the economic meltdown, that Big Blue could draw even for 2009 compared to 2008, which didn’t exactly end on a high note. Based on

Oracle, the second-largest application provider in the world and a company that aspires to rise to the top of the IT biz, has sued another company offering third party support for its applications. In 2007, it was the TomorrowNow unit of rival SAP that was slapped with a lawsuit, and three years later, it is Rimini Street, which has filled in the gap since SAP shut down the TomorrowNow unit in July 2008.

Oracle has hired hot-shot law firm Boies, Schiller, and Flexner and filed a lawsuit against Rimini Street and Seth Ravin, the company’s president and chief

Two weeks ago, The Four Hundred told you that German application software giant SAP was projecting that it would beat Wall Street’s expectations for sales in its fourth quarter as it was at the same time saying that it would be rejiggering its support fees, presumably to counter complaints from customers that they needed cheaper support than SAP was providing. In its discussion of its results, the company said that it would finally be shipping its Web-based, hosted Business ByDesign suite this year.

For the quarter ended December 31, SAP’s sales were pretty much the same as the preliminary results