• The Windows Of Opportunity

  November 17, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It has been a long, long time since the AS/400 was the dominant, and some cases the sole, platform in use at most IBM midrange shops. As we all know, the client/server revolution took the data center by storm in the late 1980s and early 1990s, first on the desktop with the PC being used as a kind of intelligent monitor for back office systems and then later with the popularity of NetWare, Unix, and eventually Windows on servers, in the data center itself as adjunct coprocessors for systems like the AS/400. Because Windows was familiar and then ubiquitous on

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• Negotiating The Upgrade Paths To Power8 Enterprise Systems

  November 17, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  This week, IBM will start shipping the first of its line of high-end Power E870 and Power E880 machines. These are the largest NUMA-style shared memory machines that Big Blue has designed using its Power8 processors, and they replace the existing Power 770, Power 780, and Power 795 machines in the lineup. Eventually, a full-bore, 12-core Power8 chip will be available in the top end Power E880 machines, offering significantly more performance in 16 sockets than a Power 795 could deliver in 32 sockets. To recap: IBM intends to offer a Power E880 that scales to 128 cores using an

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• If Infrastructure Matters, What About i?

  November 17, 2014 Dan Burger

  The Institute of Business Value, which is sponsored by IBM, has been turning out reports on its IT infrastructure research. Earlier this year in a report titled, The IT Infrastructure Conversation, it revealed less than 10 percent of organizations surveyed believed their existing IT infrastructure is prepared to meet the demands of mobile technology, big data, cloud computing, and social media. That doesn’t bode well for IBM’s plans to lead down those roads. But on the other hand, it presents an opportunity to sell a lot of infrastructure, particularly infrastructure that is enterprise strength and up to

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• As I See It: In Search of Digital Wisdom

  November 17, 2014 Victor Rozek

  Logic suggests that natives always precede immigrants; and history records that the succession process frequently doesn’t work out well for the natives. At least until now. Technology, it seems, has turned succession on its head. According to Mark Prensky, when it comes to adapting to technology, not only did the immigrants precede the natives, but the natives are doing better than their precursors. In 2001, Prensky, an educator by trade and a futurist by inclination, published an article introducing the concepts of “Digital Immigrants” and “Digital Natives.” In his model, the immigrants are the elders among us who remember a

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• Do ‘Non-Standard’ OSes Like IBM i Pose Security Risks?

  November 17, 2014 Alex Woodie

  As an IBM i professional, you’re familiar with the platform and comfortable working around it. But you’re also aware that the IBM i is different from other systems, and that it makes some people uncomfortable. According to new report from the SANS Institute, the mere existence of “non-standard” operating systems such as IBM i has the potential to introduce a security risk in the data center. In its October paper Data Center Server Security Survey 2014, the SANS Institute attempted to learn how organizations are implementing security in the data center, to define some best practices, and to

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• Time To Update Power Systems Site, Sales Pitch

  November 17, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM has spent billions of dollars and many years to bring the Power8 systems to market, and as we all know, it is not quite done rolling Power8 gear into the field. The company is also not quite caught up on updating its Power Systems website to reflect its new machines and its new focus on competing against X86 iron for transaction processing, analytics, and technical computing workloads. This is a problem, and one that a $100 billion IT giant should not have. If you go to the Power Systems sub-site on the IBM website, and then go to the

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• IBM Scores $325 Million Power Supercomputing Deals With DOE

  November 17, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The Power Systems ecosystem just got a huge shot in the arm now that IBM has landed a $325 million contract with the U.S. Department of Energy to build two new massive supercomputers, the largest of which, called “Summit,” could scale to as much as 300 petaflops of aggregate number-crunching performance. The Summit system will be installed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, home to Titan, one of the largest supercomputers in the U.S. and indeed one of the most powerful machines in the world. The Sierra system will go into Lawrence Livermore National Lab, where IBM sold its first prototype

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• IT Operational Budgets Slowly Climbing, Says Computer Economics

  November 17, 2014 Dan Burger

  The IT spending calculators have been hot and cold in 2014. Spending is up compared to 2013, but overall growth is a little too flat to make everyone happy. You’ll find some folks with smiles on their faces though and some projects that needed to get done have found the road to completion. The early outlook for 2015 is once again indicating the sun will shine if you look in the right places, but overall the IT community won’t be dancing in the streets. Some of the right places to look, according to forecasters at Computer Economics, are innovations

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• Microsoft Loves Linux. Who Would Have Thought That?

  November 17, 2014 Dan Burger

  There’s no shortage of open source software in the IBM midrange community. Examples can be found if you are enthusiastic about looking for them. And IBM likes to nuzzle up to open source as much as possible. One reason is because it can differentiate itself from Microsoft and unload the proprietary insults at the campus in Redmond. So even though there is a pretty strong hatred for Microsoft in the IBM i community, the news that Microsoft is embracing open source–on some of its server side components–is interesting in that it indicates the impact open source is having on the

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• SAP Agrees To Pay Oracle $359 Million To Settle TomorrowNow Suit

  November 17, 2014 Alex Woodie

  The long-running lawsuit between ERP giants Oracle and SAP is finally over after SAP agreed to pay Oracle about $359 million in exchange for dropping its suit over the TomorrowNow third-party support business. The amount is significantly less than $1.3 billion award that a federal court jury initially awarded Oracle back in 2010. But it’s a bit more than the $272 million Oracle had on the table in 2011 after a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California threw out the $1.3 billion award, calling it “grossly excessive.” The lawsuit stretches all the way

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