I have my ticket booked to head west to the Hot Chips 24 conference hosted by Stanford University, where IBM, Oracle, Advanced Micro Devices, and Intel are expected to talk about just announced and impending processors. But Big Blue seems unable to contain its enthusiasm for the Power7+ chip that it will talk about alongside its next-generation zNext processors for its System z mainframes.

A little more than a month ago, I told you about some of the details on the forthcoming chip that could be scrounged from poking around the Intertubes. From a die shot of

Getting something for free sounds good until you discover that it’s worth pretty much what you paid for it. In this case, Windows-based Web applications are delivered as a free hosted service. Some of the users would pay to have a better alternative. And that’s where Nathan Andelin steps in. Andelin writes applications in RPG and hosts them on an IBM Power Systems 720 running IBM i. And he’s found customers who will give up their free option for something better.

Even though the hosted service Andelin offers has a fee, that is not a deterrent. It’s a matter of

Productivity losses due to unexpected downtime were six times higher in X86 environments than Power Systems environments says a study by IDC. The study, which was commissioned by IBM and turned into a white paper that was recently posted to the IBM website, found that the cost of IT staff responses to downtime was 10 times more in the X86 environments than it was in IBM Power Systems environments.

In recent months, IBM has posted a slew of new white papers on its website that highlight the server platform and its competitive advantages. In addition to the 13-page white

With the Olympics having just concluded, a number of third-tier events will again fade into quadrennial oblivion. Sports like synchronized swimming, skeet shooting, and beach volleyball (in which scantly clad women frolic in the icy British rain) got their 15 minutes of exposure, if not fame, and will now be consigned to the devotions of small bands of loyalists. One such sport, parochially known as ping pong, has been upgraded to the more sober-sounding table tennis by serious practitioners who have transformed a basement pastime to a form of quick-twitch warfare.

I was curious about the sport because of a

All things considered in the job market, most employers prefer to recruit locally rather than considering people from out of town or out of the region. And most people searching for work would prefer a local job rather than one that requires relocation. But when the local well runs dry, you need to look for places where opportunity is likely to knock.

According to the latest news from the career-minded folks at Dice, IT folks fishing for jobs will have better luck finding honey holes in the technology-fueled economies of California, Virginia, Texas, New York, and Florida. If you

I wonder how, or if, IBM counts the thousands of used servers that have been removed from the original account, but are still working perfectly for smaller companies. These are often running vertical application software supported by IBM partners (or not). Perhaps half of our customer base is now operating on used Model 520s due to IBM’s pricing structure for new System i servers. Most don’t keep an IBM hardware maintenance contract.

Obviously these customers don’t matter much to IBM (they barely care about entry level sales of new servers). But they are still an active part of the ecosystem.

Big Blue added new machines to the Flex System lineup last week, but don’t get too excited. They were not Power7-based machines, or better still Power7+ nodes, but just X86-based nodes for the “Project Troy” modular system that the company debuted in April that are based on the latest Xeon E5 processors for two-socket and four-socket servers that were announced in May by Intel.

The Xeon E5-2600s are geared down versions of the Xeon E5-2600s that came out in March, sporting one fewer QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) link between the processor sockets and therefore lower memory capacity and bandwidth between

IBM i development tool maker Magic Software Enterprises turned over some good-looking cards last week when it announced its first half of 2012 financial results. From a product standpoint, the company was most pleased with the extension of its mobile development offerings to include support for Apple iOS and Google Android platforms for both smartphones and tablets. But the emphasis was clearly on improved financial footing.

Revenues for the first half of 2012 increased 10 percent to $58.1 million compared to $52.9 million in the same period last year. Operating income for the same six month period increased 23 percent

The iBelieve event is coming to the Big Apple, and if you are in the tri-state area on September 27, then looksoftware wants you to stop by Wall Street and sit in on its latest IBM i community event.

During my holiday two weeks ago, I went down to Wall Street where my wife works to have lunch with her and stopped by the Downtown Conference Centre run by Pace University on William Street, just a few blocks east of Ground Zero and a few blocks north of Wall Street. The shindig is perfect and looks like it might hold

When you slice a pie, you might save the biggest piece for yourself, or take just a sliver if you’re trying not to overindulge. In the predictions game, finding a glimmer of good news can also depend on how you slice up the overall picture.

The analysts at Gartner have taken another look at the worldwide IT spending pie for this year, and the slice that covers IT outsourcing looks like a good piece. According to a recent Gartner report, worldwide spending for IT outsourcing services is on pace to reach $251.7 billion in 2012, a 2.1 percent increase from