• Crazy Idea Number 528: Apple Mac OS X on Power Systems

  November 15, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  You know the old saying: One door closes, and another one opens. Last week, a door closed for customers using Apple‘s Xserve rack-mounted servers, and just possibly a door opened for IBM‘s Power Systems division. The door was actually kind of slammed in Apple Xserve customers’ faces, in fact, not merely closed. So if you think AS/400 shops are the only server customers who are fiercely loyal to their platform and yet get mistreated by their platform’s maker, you are wrong. Here’s the deal. Apple announced on November 4 that it was getting out of the rack-mounted server

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• IBM Adds Smaller Power 720 i Solution Edition

  November 15, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It looks like IBM i shops and the dozens of independent software vendors that are certified to sell their wares on Power i Solution Edition bundles are balking about the relatively high-priced configurations that IBM made available in August when the entry Power7-based Power Systems machines debuted. The reason I say that is because last week Big Blue announced a new baby i Solution Edition that is based on the smallest Power 720 the company sells. As you know from reading the past several months of price/performance analysis on the Power7 server lineup, the entry Power 720 server with only

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• IBM i Future Reflected in LANSA 2010 iPulse Survey

  November 15, 2010 Alex Woodie

  Both good and bad signs about the IBM i business emerged from LANSA‘s 2010 iPulse survey, the results of which were released last week. For example, while nearly two-thirds of IBM i professionals say the platform faces a low to non-existent threat of being dumped at their shops, nearly half report their new software budget as being zero, which brings future platform investments into question. The survey also asked the 1,700 participants from 50 countries to name the leading IBM i software vendors across several product categories. The catchphrase “in these uncertain times” has been used to describe all

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• As I See It: The Importance of Being Important

  November 15, 2010 Victor Rozek

  I’m at The Bellagio with my wife, watching people working hard at having fun. We are seated in a lounge overlooking a monument to hubris. Actually, it’s just one of many monuments to foolery in the city devoted to all things surreal: Las Vegas. In an area where moisture evaporates faster than a gambler’s cash, The Bellagio boasts an eight-acre pond with 1.5 million gallons of precious water. Every 15 minutes, its computerized fountains spit columns of agua to the dulcet strains of Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, (and less memorable music). It’s impressive the first time you see

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• Wake Up, America–And the Rest of You, Too

  November 15, 2010 Doug Mewmaw

  On a flight home after a recent business trip, I met a man who mentioned that he had left his previous company to start up a small business. During the conversation, I noticed how passionate he was when he talked about his old company. Since he raved about his past experiences, I had to know why he left. His answer didn’t surprise me. He said, “My company stopped being innovative.” When I asked him to elaborate, he said, “We spent more time in meetings and nothing ever got accomplished.” He added, “I saw a lot of creative ideas that never

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• Big Blue Chops Power6 Activation Prices on Installed Gear

  November 15, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  I would have thought that IBM would have made this move months ago when it was clear that customers were hesitant to buy new servers in the face of a struggling recovery from the recession. But the company has finally gotten around to slashing prices on processor core activation fees on installed Power6 and Power6+ servers. In announcement letter 310-285, which IBM snuck out on November 4 (a Thursday, not the traditional Tuesday announcement day, so I missed it), IBM said that between now and December 29, customers with latent processor capacity on System i 570 servers using 4.7

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• IBM Kills Off JS22 Blade Server in January, Old Disks in April

  November 15, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If for some reason you want to buy IBM‘s old Power6-based JS22 blade servers for your Blade Center chassis, you’d better hurry up. Big Blue says in announcement letter 910-198 that on January 7, 2011, it will cease peddling the JS22 blade. That machine, announced in November 2007, was a two-socket blade based on IBM’s dual-core Power6 processors running at 4 GHz. (Technically, it is product number 7998-61X in the IBM catalog.) The JS22 was over priced and not well matched to the needs of a lot of i5/OS and now IBM i shops, but that doesn’t mean that

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• Red Hat Cranks Up Enterprise Linux To 6

  November 15, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last week, commercial Linux distributor Red Hat rolled out its Enterprise Linux version 6 operating system, the first major update of the operating system known colloquially as RHEL since March 2007. A lot of things in the server and operating system racket have changed in those 44 months between RHEL 5 and RHEL 6, including the advent of several generations of X64, Power, and System z mainframe engines. And, in the case of Red Hat, the plug is being pulled on Intel‘s Itanium processors. That’s right. RHEL 6 runs on Power-based systems and System z mainframes from IBM, but

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• Jack Henry Acquisitions Push Record Q1 Revenue

  November 15, 2010 Dan Burger

  Major acquisitions during the past year are bringing expected gains to the first quarter fiscal 2001 financial report at Jack Henry and Associates. With integration nearly complete and the three acquired companies–iPay Technologies, Goldleaf Financial Solutions, and Pemco Technologies–reportedly running at or above expected performance, JHA enjoyed record revenue and net income for the quarter. JHA is a producer of integrated software systems for the banking industry. It also processes ATM and debit card transactions for banks and credit unions. Its customer base includes businesses with core applications running on the IBM i platform as well as others. In

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• Negotiate Wisely: It’s Your Job and Your Salary

  November 15, 2010 Dan Burger

  The biggest mistake IT professionals can make is to assume they have no bargaining power with their current employers. Fear of having your job outsourced; fear of being downsized to death; fear of sounding too arrogant, too dissatisfied, or too ungrateful keeps you harnessed to the plow while your boss treats you like a rented mule. You may think you have to play the game of more work for less pay, but you may want to think again. Your boss might be more worried about you walking out than you are about him kicking you out the door. The door

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