• CUoD Processor Activation Prices Cut In Half for Big Power7 Iron

  October 24, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As we report elsewhere in this issue of The Four Hundred, the high-end of the new Power7-based Power Systems line did particularly well on the growth front in the third quarter (albeit against some easy compares), and IBM wants more in the fourth quarter. Late last week, in announcement number 311-155, Big Blue snuck out a Power7 Capacity Upgrade on Demand (CUoD) discount promotion that offers customers with Power 770, 780, and 795 machines that were installed as of October 1. Under the deal, IBM is cutting the price of activating cores on certain processor cards used in

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• IBM Chooses Power Systems Champions

  October 24, 2011 Dan Burger

  Real innovation and emerging trends can get lost in the IT world where buzzwords show up and disappear like the phases of the moon. The IBM Power Systems universe is no different. Maybe the buzz isn’t as deafening and maybe the innovation and trends sometimes get buried under the weight of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” status quo–a place where “No Innovation” signs are nailed to all the fence posts–but the Power Systems users have their moments of glory. Giving the innovators a bigger stage is the idea behind the IBM Champions, a group of IT professionals, developers,

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• IBM i Technology Refreshes and PTFs: Be Careful

  October 24, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Starting last year, IBM started doing what it calls Technology Rrefreshes for the IBM i operating system that provide support for new systems and peripherals as they come to market. These Technology Refreshes are numbered–TR3 came out on October 12 with the new Power Systems servers–so you can keep track of them. But it may not be entirely obvious how you should deal with them if you are used to patching your system with PTFs. Doug Bidwell, who puts together the System i PTF Guide that is published at IT Jungle, offers some insight and advice: The latest technology

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• IT Spending Growth To Slow In 2012, Says Gartner

  October 24, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is very difficult for IT spending to grow faster than gross domestic product in any country or globally for very long. While the economies of the Western world are by and large still growing, at least at the crudest levels that we can measure with the economic tools we have, that growth is slowing. And consequently, the people who make a living calling the IT market are beginning to think that growth will slow a bit in 2012. Gartner hosted its Symposium/ITxpo last week, and Peter Sondergaard, a senior vice president at Gartner and the head of its global

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• RPG Open Access Availability Expands Modernization Efforts

  October 24, 2011 Dan Burger

  Earlier this month, looksoftware became the third IBM i ISV to set up a distribution program for IBM‘s Rational Open Access: RPG Edition that coincides with the purchase of the company’s lookserver Open Access, a product that provides the integration layer for creating composite applications, generates XML clients, and supports browser-based devices. By distributing Rational Open Access: RPG Edition, looksoftware is avoiding the complicated and frustrating ordering process that companies have experienced when attempting to order the ROA product from IBM. Other application modernization tool vendors, Profound Logic and ASNA, have previously taken the step to handle distribution

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• As I See It: One Cabbage Leaf

  October 24, 2011 Victor Rozek

  Nations are typically organized around a set of founding principles and enduring personality traits. France initially coalesced around the rallying cry of the revolution: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and later embraced overpriced food and rude service. America united in its support of individual rights and unlimited use of fossil fuels. And Canada stood unabashedly for real maple syrup and hockey. But whether it’s settling a frontier, relieving a monarch of his head, or deposing whatever crony the CIA chooses for you, once governments achieve their basic mandates, the wise ones seek new ways to improve the lives of their citizens. By

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• IBM Bolsters PowerHA with New Replication Options, GUI

  October 24, 2011 Alex Woodie

  One of the October 12 IBM announcements that we didn’t cover in last week’s The Four Hundred was new PRPQ features added to the PowerHA SystemMirror for i offering, which is IBM’s hardware-based disk clustering solution. IBM announced that PowerHA customers can now replicate data across additional external storage systems, including the Storwize V7000 midrange array and the SAN Volume Controller (SVC) appliance. PowerHA also got a new GUI and new command-line functionality. PowerHA SystemMirror for i, in case you forgot, was officially unveiled as part of the IBM i 7.1 launch in April 2008, and is the follow-on product

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• Power Systems Carries That Weight In IBM’s Third Quarter

  October 24, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Despite the impending launch of new Power7-based machines that came out on October 12, the Power Systems business on which IBM i customers depend nonetheless booked another great 13 weeks in the third quarter of 2011. Even though IBM was short $103 million compared to what Wall Street expected it to do in terms of aggregate sales, profits were right on target and Big Blue was confident enough in the fourth quarter to raise its earnings guidance for the third time this year. In the quarter, IBM’s sales rose by 7.8 percent, to $24.2 billion, with net income under a

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• IBM Gooses Power Systems Storage and Networking

  October 24, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As we discussed in last week’s issue, on October 12 IBM rolled out some new entry and enterprise Power7-based systems with double the maximum memory capacity and with support for PCI-Express 2.0 peripheral cards, doubling up the bandwidth per slow. But there were a bunch of other enhancements to storage and networking adapters, too, and these are useful for all Power Systems shops on reasonably recent machinery. The new SAS disk and flash drive controllers are the most interesting new devices that IBM put out in the October announcements. With solid state drives now coming into vogue to boost

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• Admin Alert: Adding Redundancy to Power i SMS Monitoring

  October 19, 2011 Joe Hertvik

  In an earlier column, I discussed how to use email addressing to send text message alerts to Power i administrators when a problem occurs. This week, I’ll discuss how to enhance that solution by providing redundancy for i OS text messaging, so that urgent messages can always be delivered regardless of whether or not your email system is running. The Coverage Plan, Phase I In my previous article, I outlined a monitoring plan for using cell phones, email, and text messages to alert administrators when critical iSeries, System i, and Power i events occur. This plan consisted of

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