The long-awaited upgrade to the Power7+ processors for entry and midrange rack and tower servers looks to be on the horizon and moving toward us fast. IBM is gearing up for its next Smarter Computing launch event, which will be on February 5. And the circumstantial evidence and the word on the street both point to a Power Systems launch. This is not exactly a surprise to anyone, of course.

I was able to ferret out plenty of details about the Power7+ processors months ahead of when Big Blue started talking about them at the Hot Chips 24 semiconductor conference

If IBM could control the situation its way, it would probably never launch new Power Systems and System z mainframe systems anywhere even close to on the same cycle because keeping them spaced would allow its Systems and Technology Group to operate more like a multi-cylinder engine, running smoothly, rather than a pile driver, sometimes up and sometimes down. But managing chip designs and system rollouts is complex–being late is normal and being on time is unusual–and companies still think on annual cycles.

I continue to believe that IBM intended to ship the Power7+ chips back in October 2011, which

With the requests for getting more information from existing data piling up like snow drifts in downtown Erie, Pennsylvania, IBM midrange shops are studying their query, reporting, and so-called business intelligence software options in hopes of finding the shovel that can dig them out. In doing so, discoveries are made that show that IBM i and its DB2 for i database has both tremendous capabilities and the potential for some disappointing outcomes.

For all of its limitations, the primordial Query/400 continues to be the favorite tool in shops that have otherwise regularly upgraded their hardware and software since the early

A young man died recently, by his own hand. He had the tussled good looks that women like and men envy, and an exceptional mind capable of contributing to the general welfare. He was, in the estimation of admirers, a digital Robin Hood, robbing the establishment of its data and sharing it without condition or hope of profit; dispensing the King’s venison to hungry men. The King, however, was not pleased, and although the young man did not pose an actual danger to anyone, he was, by all accounts, becoming a royal nuisance. In the end, though, what may have

IT workers in the United States can expect to receive a 3.0 percent increase in pay this year compared to the amount they received last year, according to a recent survey by Computer Economics. While the boost isn’t enough to break out the bubbly, it beats the venerable poke in the eye socket. The market research firm also found that more businesses expect to add IT staff than those expecting lay offs.

In its IT Salary Report 2013, Computer Economics found that organizations are budgeting for a 3.0 percent increase in pay for IT workers. The 3.0 percent

Last week in The Four Hundred, I told you about a deal that IBM was offering in Europe to Power Systems resellers who peddled ISV software on top of the systems. As it turns out, IBM Italy has another similar deal aimed at getting customers to upgrade to new Power Systems machines using Power7 processors, and in one special case, a Power6+ server.

In announcement letter ZA132-1014, which was announced on January 15 and then amended on January 23 (when I actually saw it pop up in the increasingly crazy IBM announcement database), IBM is offering rebates to

Not everybody saw IT spending tick upward as last year came to a close, but IT and electronics component distributor Avnet did.

In its second quarter of fiscal 2013 ended in December, Avnet said that its overall sales were only up one-tenth of a point to just a hair under $6.7 billion, with net income dropping 6.5 percent to $137.5 million. But you can’t blame the Technology Solutions side of Avnet, which is a master distributor of server, storage, and networking gear as well as software and services for the data center.

“Our overall Q2 results reflect a stronger than

A new year brings a new opportunity to look ahead at what we want to accomplish in the next 12 months. In the world of IT, there are always fires to put out and systems to maintain, but according to a recent survey by the analysts at Gartner, 2013 needs to be the year when CIOs take control of digital technologies such as mobile devices and applications, analytics, big data, social media, and the cloud.

The survey was conducted in the fourth quarter in 2012 and included 2,053 CIOs representing more than $230 billion in CIO IT budgets and

The IBM Connect 2013 conference broke from the gate on January 27 with a heavy emphasis on social business transformation and knowledge sharing. For 20 years, this annual Orlando, Florida, event was called Lotusphere, and although that name hasn’t quite yet been wiped from the slate, it no longer fits with IBM’s dissolution of its Lotus division and the ensuing rebranding that the company is doing.

Unless you are a Lotus insider, a user, and a big fan, the Lotus brand is widely perceived to be out of touch with modern times. IBM is working feverishly to change that perception–which

Anything that makes Power Systems–and now PureSystems–stronger makes the IBM i platform that more viable for that more time because IBM’s interesting in any technology is precisely proportional to the amount of profits it can consistently extract from that technology.

And so it was good news to the IBM i platform when Mark Loughridge, chief financial officer, during his conference call last week with Wall Street analysts going over the fourth quarter and full year financial results, dropped a statistic that Big Blue now had more than 2,300 PureSystems in over 70 countries who had bought its PureSystems modular, converged