You are probably wondering why IBM started the Power7 systems rollout in the middle of the line instead of rolling the line out at once as it did in days gone by with the AS/400 and RS/6000 machinery. It is really simple. IBM has dominant market share in the high-end of the midrange lineup represented for the past six years by the 570-class machines–iSeries, pSeries, System i, System p, and Power Systems all–and the company wants to keep it that way.

According to Ross Mauri, general manager of the Power Systems division within IBM’s Systems and Technology Group, the 570-class

As part of the rollout of the first wave of Power7-based Power Systems servers last week, IBM provided a little insight–and mind you, I did not say a lot of insight–about what the future entry and high-end products would look like. As usual, Big Blue issued some statements of direction concerning these bookends of the Power Systems lineup, and as usual, they didn’t really say enough to help customers make plans.

If you are expecting IBM to say a lot more about the high-end of the product line than it already has, you did get a few more morsels of

Whenever a new chip comes to market, there’s always a question about how many good chips are coming off the wafer baker lines–what is known in the chip industry as the yield. Whenever a company shifts its chip making processes at the same time as the overall design changes radically, this is a bit nerve wracking. But apparently not with the eight-core Power7 chips that are the brains in the new Power 7XX line of servers from IBM.

At the launch event for the four new Power7 systems last week in New York, which was held on the 36th

One of the products that helps drive i/OS users forward is the Lotus Domino family of communications servers. IBM has been rolling out quite few new or enriched features lately, and argues that the new technologies, which cost more, pay their way by improving productivity. But there’s catch: IBM’s most advanced Domino features can require new operating systems. Basically, the latest Lotus announcement can mean that your operating system, which could have run any version of Domino a year ago might not support the Domino you want a year from now.

If your system runs OS/400 V5R3, which is pretty

On the whole, workers in the United States saw their paychecks shrivel last year. Weekly earnings fell 1.6 percent. Maybe in that light, a projected increase in IT salaries of 1.8 percent in 2010 is not so bad. That’s the “things could be worse” perspective anyway. Welcome to “Austerity 2010,” where even meager wage increases have to be compared with worst-case scenarios that include declines in personal income and loss of employment.

The news of this little bump in pay comes from a new report released by Computer Economics, a research and advisory service that specializes in strategic and

The four new models of the Power Systems lineup based on the Power7 processors were not the only thing that IBM cooked up in the engineering labs. As usual, the drumbeat of change continues a-pace for the various subsystems that are used with the new as well as existing systems, and in this case, some storage features have been upgraded.

First up is a new DAT320 tape drive for archiving data and distributing software that is intended for entry and midrange boxes. Feature 5661, as the device is warmly known, slides into selected Power 520 and Power 550 servers as

IBM always announces its partnerships for bringing new kinds of applications to the i/OS platform with much fanfare, and being optimistic, we at The Four Hundred cover these launches with attention and hope. Sometimes, IBM’s love affair with ISV wares as well as with its own code seems to end abruptly.

So it seems to be with some software withdrawals that happened as part of last week’s rollout of the initial Power7-based servers. In announcement letter 910-002, IBM told i/OS shops that effective May 31, it would stop selling the 3Com Telephony software for the System i platform (5639-3CM)

IBM this month began shipping a new information archiving appliance that offers non-erasable, non-rewritable (NENR) storage capabilities. Based on IBM’s DR550 storage array, the Information Archive version 1.1 can ingest data via Network File System (NFS), which is supported by the System i and every other server, and is being positioned as an ideal archive solution for medium sized companies with legal or regulatory information retention obligations.

A raft of new regulations last decade drove organizations to adopt stricter data protection measures. About five years ago, there was a big rush to so-called Write Once, Read Many (WORM) technologies, which

In its ongoing and escalating campaign against Oracle and in anticipation of a lot of mudslinging (or worse) as the Power7-based machines start coming to market, IBM has launched a spoof of political campaign advertising promoting the new Power Systems and slapping Oracle for cheating on benchmarks tests.

The site, which is on Facebook here and which has a YouTube video there, is about as amusing as these things tend to be. (What can you expect from a couple of marketeering people, a modest artistic budget, and a few bottles of wine?) IBM is once again trying out viral

Heads were rolling and chairs were moving at German application software giant SAP last week. The changes were implemented in the wake of the global economic meltdown, difficulties in getting a SaaS product called Business ByDesign to market, and an uproar in the SAP customer base as the company was getting set to jack up maintenance prices. Customers balked, SAP blinked, and gave SAP shops a two-tiered maintenance plan that probably has plenty of customers still grumbling.

On February 7, SAP announced that Leo Apotheker, who had been the company’s sole CEO for the past seven months, resigned from the