• The i5 515 and 525: IBM’s Competitive Analysis

  April 30, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If the new user-priced System i 515 and 525 servers that were announced on April 10 show anything, it is that IBM is at least aware that it needs to compete against Windows-based X64 servers if it hopes to remain in the small and midrange server market. In years gone by, as each server successive AS/400, iSeries, and System i5 line has been announced, Big Blue has always compared the new generation of OS/400 or i5/OS server to the prior generations. This obviously missed the point. This time around, the presentations that IBM is giving to partners and customers reckon

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• More Details Emerge on IBM’s Upcoming Power6 Server Launch

  April 30, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM, like most other server makers, doesn’t like to talk about upcoming product launches because such talk can have an adverse effect on sales in the current quarter. That’s one of the reasons why Big Blue is not talking about its upcoming Power6 server launch, and it is also why the company has done nothing to confirm or deny some of the rumors that are running around about Power6 being delayed. But if some of the sources I have heard from are right, then the Power6 launch is imminent. Last week, I took a look at the rumors swirling

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• How to Build a Less Expensive i5 Developer Workstation

  April 30, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  A few weeks ago, in the wake of the announcement of the user-priced System i5 515 and 525 servers, Jim Herring, director of System i product management and business operations, and Ian Jarman, product manager of the System i product line, held a chat with the iSociety community, which is dominated by developers. And one of the questions they had is if IBM would consider creating a single-user developer workstation out of the i5 515. I think I have a better idea. When I covered that chat for this newsletter two weeks ago, I riffed a little bit on

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Hearts and Minds

  April 30, 2007 Hesh Wiener

  In 1991, Richard Stallman‘s great project, the GNU operating system, was made whole when Linus Torvalds developed the kernel, Linux, that it had lacked. The next year, there was a marriage. Henceforth, Linux, like GNU before it, was to be distributed under the General Public License (GPL), the legal arrangement that defines Free Software. Today, GNU/Linux is arguably the most popular server operating system, and the GPL is the dominant license for revealed source code software. Yet it is still not certain that there is safe place for both hearts and minds in the unfolding world of software development.

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• Prices Cut for i5 570 and 595 Memory and Processor Features

  April 30, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM last week cut some feature prices on i5 570 and 595 servers to make the cost of building up processor complexes a little less expensive. On the i5 570, IBM cut the price of a processor core activation by 27 percent to $10,500. The price to add main memory on the i5 570 was also cut, but not so much. The price of the 8/16 GB capacity upgrade on demand (CUoD) memory for the 570, feature 4496, was cut by 8 percent to $18,510; the price of a 16 GB memory increment (feature 4497) was cut by 5 percent

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• IBM Opens Up Beta for PAVE Linux Runtime on Power Chips

  April 30, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last week, IBM opened up a public beta testing cycle for an emulation product that it has created with a partner that will allow applications written for Linux on X86 and X64 processors to run on its Power-based System p servers running Linux. IBM quietly announced that it was working with Transitive, the company that created a very sophisticated emulation tool called QuickTransit and launched it for use by systems vendors in June 2005. QuickTransit is, for instance, a key piece of the “Rosetta” emulation environment that allowed Apple Computer to stop using Power processors from IBM and Motorola

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• Norwegian IT Reseller Buys Top Nordic System i5 Reseller

  April 30, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Consolidation in the IT industry is not just happening in the United States, and it is not only occurring in the software market. For instance, last week, a prominent System i5 reseller from Norway, the Ementor Group, acquired another reseller in the Nordic region, called Informatikk, for about 92 million Norwegian krone, or about $15.3 million at current exchange rates for the U.S. dollar. Informatikk has offices across the Nordic region, and is known as the dominant distributor of System i5 gear in the area of Europe. Specifically, Informatikk has 122 employees, who are located in offices in

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• Hitachi Boosts Enterprise-Class Hard Drives to 1 Terabyte

  April 30, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM is just finally getting around to putting 70 GB and 141 GB SCSI disk drives in 3.5-inch form factors in as standard devices on the System i5 line, but the old IBM disk operations now owned and operated by Hitachi continues to kick out advanced disk technology that will hopefully–and quickly–find its way into the i5/OS platform. The most interesting of these–and one that I have been advocating to be used in the i5 platform, is the 2.5-inch SAS disk drive, the Ultrastar C10K147, which spins at 10K RPM and which has either 73 GB or 147 GB of

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• Relativity Technologies Grows Fast from Legacy Application Modernization

  April 30, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is a rare day when a privately held software company gives the world a peek into their books, but legacy application modernization software vendor Relativity Technologies last week divulged a few morsels of its most recent financial results. Relativity is based in Raleigh, North Carolina, and has been in business for the past decade. Its core product, which is called Modernization Workbench, is used to take just about any kind of legacy application you can imagine–RPG, COBOL, PL1, Visual Basic, C and C++–and run it through a language parser that can break it down into business rules that can

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• What Can I Select When I Group?

  April 25, 2007 Dear highly esteemed professional colleague

  It’s not uncommon for someone to ask me for help with error SQL0122, which involves SQL commands that use the GROUP BY clause to produce summary figures. Since I see this error over and over and over, I thought it would be good to explain how summary queries work. The standard rule I hear is that the SELECT clause of summary queries can list aggregate fields (those in the GROUP BY clause), expressions that are in the GROUP BY clause, and column functions, such as COUNT, SUM, and AVG. That’s close, but slightly inaccurate. A reader who contacted me recently

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