With the Power9 chips slated for some time in the second half of next year, and the Power8 systems not being upgraded with a formal Power8+ variant, it is not surprise to us that sales of Power Systems iron based on the Power8 chip that launched in April 2014 are waning. It is the nature of every product cycle to have its ramp, its peak, and its slide. The slide is just a way to extract profits, with the ease of sales and improving yields on chips compensating for the fact that Big Blue has to discount more to move

During the past several years, VAI has rerouted its ERP software roadmap with a modernization plan that included Web and mobile development, cloud-based managed services, and now business intelligence analytics. At the company’s user conference last week in New Orleans, it provided a peek at the BI component in S2K Version 6, which is in the hands of a few customers now and is expected to be generally available in Q1 2017.

VAI’s S2K software is running core business applications in approximately 1,500 IBM midrange shops, primarily in the distribution, manufacturing, and retail industries. The privately owned and family operated

Logically, tape backups shouldn’t be as popular as they are. The process is cumbersome and hardly aligned with the accelerating pace of IT capabilities and business decision making. When you factor in the recovery time for most companies that rely on tape, the logic becomes twisted. Even with automation, shorter backup windows, multi-platform complexity, and regulatory compliance combine to push the question of whether tape is reasonable, in spite of its widespread popularity.

The online, service-based, backup alternative has been in place for almost 30 years with many improvements during that time. Internet connectivity, CPU capacity, data compression, encryption, and

It was Fitzgerald who is credited with making what is surely one of the more self-evident observations in history. Namely that “the rich are different from you and me.” To which Hemmingway supposedly replied, “yeah, they have more money.” It didn’t actually happen that way, but small matter. The exchange–more literary than conversational–stuck in the popular imagination.

Different though they may be, the rich have the same essential needs as their less affluent brethren. Like the rest of us they crave connection, but that craving is informed by a fear of being taken advantage of. That, in brief, is the

IBM raised some eyebrows with the recent release of its Cloud Storage Solutions for i, which enables IBM i shops to back up and archive DB2 and IFS data to its SoftLayer cloud. Much of the initial feedback to IBM’s first native cloud solution for IBM i was positive. But some IBM business partners are already questioning whether the solution will be actually useful for customers as it now stands.

Cloud Storage Solutions for i was a part of IBM’s big October 11 announcement for IBM i 7.3 Technology Refresh 1 (TR1) and 7.2 TR5. The software, which carries product