IBM midrange shops that have upgraded to the i 7.1 and i 7.2 releases of the IBM i operating system have a new batch of enhancements as the latest round of Technology Refreshes was announced last week. Application development, database management, security, and support for the new enterprise-class Power8 machines will grab the attention of most IBM i advocates. The two releases–TR9 for i 7.1 and TR1 for i 7.2–are almost identical.

Programmers and software developers will get the most out of these latest upgrades to the operating system and support for REST-based services tops the list of OS enhancements.

IBM is poised to redefine enterprise IT. Of course, IBM pretty much defined it in the first place, so you have to take that into account. And with poise in short supply in IT, maybe self-assured is a better description. IBM surely lacked no confidence as it put on a show for its enterprise customers last week in Las Vegas, where talk of billion dollar investments, trailblazing new technologies, and pioneering open systems partnerships attempted to outshine the city of lights.

With the final paperwork completed on the sale of IBM’s System x X86 server business just a week ahead

OVH, one of the largest cloud computing and hosting providers in the world and the largest hosting provider in Europe, has gotten a bunch of Power8 machines and is offering virtual slices of the machines for customers to play around with as it works out how to more fully commercialize the service.

OVH was founded in 1999 outside of Paris by Octave Klaba, and the name is short for on vous héberge, which is French for “we host you.” The company built its first datacenter nearly a decade and a half ago in Paris, and now operates 16

IBM owes a lot of money. At midyear, it told its shareholders that it was carrying $34 billion in long-term debt and another $12.5 billion in short-term debt, for a total of $46.5 billion. That is about 2.7 times IBM’s shareholder equity of $17.4 billion. IBM’s bondholders and banks are confident Big Blue is good for the money, credit rating agencies and Wall Street analysts are generally pleased. But for customers depending on IBM, its financial priorities may be a worry. Bean-counters may tug IBM one way while bit-bashers pull it another.

IBM isn’t alone in its use of large

Ever since IBM founded the OpenPower Foundation and announced it was opening up its Power processing architecture to the world, we’ve been waiting for the first non-IBM Power-based server to become available. That day will arrive soon thanks to Taiwanese motherboard and system maker Tyan.

Last week Tyan announced that, at the end of the month, it will begin delivery of the GN70-BP010. Codenamed “Palmetto,” it’s the first OpenPower customer reference system to become available to the general public.

GN70-BP010 is a 2U system that contains a single chip module (SCM) Power8 processor, codenamed “Turismo,” running on a single-socket,

It’s been said before, but maybe the time for Linux and i integration is finally drawing near.

“We have a fundamental belief that you can’t survive in this new world of mobile, social, big data, and cloud without being able to integrate and interface into the system of record in a secure and scalable manner,” says Stephen Leonard, general manager of IBM Systems and Technology Group sales.

IBM, with its major investment in Linux, thinks Power Systems are the best answer for making that integration and interface not only more effective, but also more cost efficient based on the existing

As part of the Power Systems announcements on October 6, IBM did not just put out some new servers and an update to the current two releases of the IBM i operating system. The company also tweaked a bunch of software in the Power Systems stack, all of which is important because right now the Power platform is the platform of choice for Big Blue for just about every workload you can think of. There is no System x division.

If you want to build clouds based on Power machines, you have to have software to control the compute and

Another set of announcements related to the Power Systems platform have come, and IBM is sunsetting a bunch of Power-based iron.

In announcement letter 914-199, IBM said that it was pulling the plug on the original Power7-based Power 770 enterprise-class server (product number 9117-MMC if you want to look on the back of your system). The Power 770+ machine (number 9117-MMD) based on the Power7+ and the just-announced Power E870 (9117-MME) based on the Power8 chips are the replacement products. The machine will be withdrawn from marketing on January 6, 2015.

On that same date, IBM will be withdrawing

SUSE Linux, the German-American distributor of commercial-grade Linux operating systems that will soon be part of Micro Focus, is getting up to launch its much-awaited SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 operating system. And the Power8 machines from IBM are the first boxes that are being talked about running the updated Linux.

In announcement letter 214-378, IBM said that it was tuning up SLES 12 to run on the Linux-only variants of the Power8 scale-out servers sporting the PowerKVM V2.1.1 hypervisor. At the moment, when SLES 12 ships for Power-based machines on October 27, IBM is only supporting

Organizations everywhere come under heavy criticism for failing to have mobile application projects lined up like ducks on a pond. The folks with the pitch forks and torches outside the IT castle include the C-level transformational business types, the marketing miracle makers, and the human resources employee self-service advocates. Meanwhile, inside the IT department, there are application development teams wrestling with problems such as integrating front-end systems of engagement with backend systems of records, keeping data secure in a mobile world, and managing the boatload of mobile devices that workers, customers and business partners have at their disposal.

Phil Buckellew,