The Edge 2013 conference for IBM customers and partners with a bend toward big data and cloud is under way in Las Vegas this week, but the Power Systems platform running the IBM i is getting some action with a special discounted bundle of hardware, software, and services that will make it less costly and easier for IBM i shops to move to PureFlex modular systems.

I caught wind two weeks ago that there was a special deal coming for IBM i customers running their workloads on Flex System iron, and this turns out to be the case. This deal

It is not like the just-opened valve on a fire hydrant, but the number of OS upgrades from i5/OS V5R4 to IBM i 6.1 and 7.1 is a steady stream of activity. Up at the enterprise level of the IBM midrange, this is old news. It’s unlikely any of those shops are still sitting on i5/OS V5R4. But in the small to midsize businesses, the OS upgrade activity buzzes along like tree cutters turned loose on 500 acres of forest. Technology marches on, finally.

There has been a lot of talk about the end of tech support for i5/OS V5R4

If you were hoping that the box counters at IDC would have better news about the server business–or lack thereof on some fronts–in the first quarter after Gartner gave its prognosis, sorry. No can do. While the world is consuming more machinery than it did in past years, the revenues are sliding and it is my guess that profits are sliding even faster across the industry.

And that is not a good thing for the major IT vendors, who are depending on lush and luscious system profits to run their businesses for the long haul instead of for the short

Phowa is a Sanskrit word meaning “the transference of consciousness at the time of death.” The intersection of science and religion, technology and spirituality, forms an uneasy junction, often distrustful and frequently violent. Historically, science has been derisive of faith, and believers were naturally suspicious of science. Thus, for centuries, few things have been more intransigent to change than religion. It came, if at all, at a glacial pace, resistant to modernity, impervious to reason. And perhaps that was as it should be.

If you believe you have a pipeline to the divine–that revelation is yours alone; and that your

IBM and 10gen, the company behind the open-source MongoDB NoSQL database, announced a partnership last week that will lead to closer integration between MongoDB and DB2 for Linux, Unix, and Windows (LUW), as well as WebSphere middleware. The work will allow developers to build compelling Web and mobile applications on DB2 that utilize NoSQL storage and query concepts. The question for IBM i shops is whether Big Blue sees fit to add the same capabilities to the DB2 for i database that is integrated with the operating system.

MongoDB is the most popular NoSQL database, which is gaining popularity

Big Blue is adamant about building up its cloud business, and has promised Wall Street that it can boost cloud-related services revenues to $7 billion by 2015. IBM was late to the public cloud game, which Amazon Web Services fired up in 2006 after several years of development. Call it something like a decade of a lead. And that is why it has shelled out an undisclosed sum to buy cloud and hosting rival SoftLayer.

While IBM has made great strides with its SmartCloud public cloud, it has many orders of magnitude fewer customers than AWS and a less

Times are tough in the IT conference business. Last week, the annual IBM i application development conference known as DevCon said that it is folding its tent as a result of declining attendance rates in recent years. Less than a month ago, COMMON Europe pulled the plug on its annual Power Systems conference. Disappointing pre-event registration totals and the loss of IBM support were cited as the cause. In April, the COMMON Annual Meeting and Exposition had its lightest attendance ever. Declining conference attendance is widespread throughout many industries. It is another sign of the times.

A form letter was

If you are an IBM i shop sitting on a relatively old box that is no longer on maintenance and you want to get back on Software Maintenance while also moving to a new Power7 or Power7+ system, then IBM‘s EMEA region has two deals for you. And if you use them both, you will only spend $2 instead of thousands to possibly many tens of thousands of dollars.

Both of the deals, which were announced on May 30 and then quickly updated on June 5 are part of IBM’s 25-year Power i anniversary celebration, and I also think

Have you ever been talking with someone who believes he knows everything about IBM‘s famed AS/400? The worst of these fountains of IT knowledge are completely unaware there is such a thing as an IBM i on Power Systems platform. If you have patience, you listen politely for a few minutes until this self-proclaimed techno genius proves he doesn’t know the difference between an AS/400 and a Maytag Model 72 wringer washer.

Well, we all have a tendency to talk about things we don’t know about. But when it comes to IBM i running on Power Systems iron, most

IBM has been providing technology to the French Open since 1985. As you might imagine, a lot has changed in the last 28 years. At one time, back in the early 2000s, the AS/400 and then the iSeries played a role, but these days the tennis data is served on a private power cloud.

The French Open, which just wrapped up on Sunday, has been known to draw up to 100 times normal traffic to the tournament Web site at www.rolandgarros.com. With that kind of a visitor surge, it is easy to see why IBM’s SmartCloud services are