The IT Jungle

Open The Door, Let The Future In

September 8, 2014 Dan Burger

People in the IBM i community continue to have their sights set on the future. The problem is that the numbers aren’t as big as they should be. With more than 100,000 IBM i customers worldwide, it would seem that future think would be a higher priority. One of the gauges that I use for this is the attendance at the technical conferences. Attendance is on the rise, but there should be a higher level of participation based on the system capabilities and the skills investments of companies using it. There will be several tech conferences with IBM i training

Paper Or Digital Forms? Having It Both Ways

September 8, 2014 Dan Burger

Finding the cost savings in digital document management is one of the easiest search and replace substitutions an organization can undertake. It begins with the people costs associated with handling paper records and includes the reduction–but not the elimination–of printing, mailing, and storage of business-related information. The experience of one industrial supply company provides a good example of the reality of this cost saving project.

Midway Industrial Supply is an equipment and parts distribution company with thousands of customers and a sales staff that services those customers. The business runs on an IBM IT infrastructure that began with

IT Job Creation Outpaces The U.S. Economy In August

September 8, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

The economy in the United States faltered a bit in terms of job creation in August, ending a pretty strong run where the number of jobs created were not only large enough to keep pace with population growth and new workers entering the workforce but also to make a dent in the number of people who were looking for work and could not find it.

According to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, not only was job creation weaker in August than expected, with 142,000 non-farm jobs added compared to an expected 225,000, but the numbers

Inspur Joins OpenPower To Build Power Machines

September 8, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

It has been a little over a year since IBM got together with Google, Nvidia, Mellanox Technologies, and Tyan to form the OpenPower Foundation to open up the hardware and software technologies around the Power8 processor. The organization now has 53 members, the latest of which is Chinese systems maker Inspur.

In late August, IBM announced a deal that would put its DB2 database and WebSphere Application Server middleware on top of the 32-socket Tiansuo K1 NUMA server, which Inspur describes as a “high-end and fault tolerant computer”. Physically, it looks a bit like an

Reader Feedback On Coming Face To Face With An IBM i Recruit

September 8, 2014 Hey, Dan

I wanted you to know that I thought your article, Coming Face to Face with an IBM i Recruit (The Four Hundred August 14, 2014) was excellent. We, the aging IBM i faithful, need to seek out and help the next generation join the ranks of employed IBM i professionals.

I am an Omni User (greater Chicago area local user group) board member, and we are making an effort to work with Michelle August and Moraine Valley Community College. In fact, Omni is holding its annual technical conference (September 5 and 6) at Moraine Valley. I am hopeful that

Server Refresh Cycle Begins Anew

September 8, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

It looks like we are on the cusp of the next big server refresh cycle, and hopefully all boats will rise with the water level. We could even break a $50 billion year for system sales (that is my estimate, not that of IDC), which is a number we have not seen in many a year in the IT market. Judge for yourself how significant server sales are to the overall health of the IT market, but I have always thought of servers as a bellwether for the overall health of IT given the insatiable desire for more computing

As I See It: I See England, I See France, I See Techie Underpants

September 8, 2014 Victor Rozek

Imagine an ad featuring a nerdy-looking guy lying on his unmade bed, typing on his laptop, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts with stars and galaxies spinning on his butt. The announcer tells you that this line of underwear was inspired by Einstein and features a flexible waistband because “The universe is always expanding.” Wouldn’t you just want to run out and buy a pair?

Me neither.

What if the company then claimed it was fighting discrimination against nerds, and that the guy in the ad was actually the CEO of a Silicon Valley startup? Don’t know about

IBM Clarifies Power8 Chippery And Performance

September 8, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

A few weeks back, The Four Hundred gave you some details about the performance of Power8 systems and how they were doing a little bit better than IBM had expected on a series of benchmark tests compared to the prior generation of Power7+ machinery. In that story I also discussed the two versions of the Power8 chip and IBM wants to clarify some of the specifics of the Power8 chips and the benchmark results.

Here’s the background. Systems performance engineer Alex Mericas, who works in IBM’s Systems and Technology Group, gave a presentation at the Hot Chips 26 conference in

Cloud Vendors Team Up To Offer Hybrid IBM i-X86 DR Service

September 8, 2014 Alex Woodie

In today’s interconnected world, no IBM i server operates alone anymore, so why should they be recovered separately? With that in mind, longtime IBM i server reseller Meridian IT has partnered with NScaled, a provider of business continuity solutions for Windows and Linux, to offer a hybrid disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) offering that spans the IBM i and X86 platforms.

Based in the IBM i hotbed of Chicago, Meridian IT is one of the bigger IBM business partners hawking Power servers today. Like other IBM resellers, the 35-year-old company has responded to the call of the cloud, and

Plotting Out A Power Systems Resurgence

September 8, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

IBM is on the brink of shedding its System x server business and freeing itself of the inherent contradiction of wanting to push its own systems and wanting to also be a player in Windows and Linux X86 server arenas that represent the vast majority of shipments and a dominant slice of the revenue pie in the systems market. Soon, Big Blue will be solely a peddler of Power Systems and System z machinery.

Does IBM really believe that it can take on the X86 platform with the maintenance of the mainframe base and a steady and continuing expansion of

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