• IBM Reveals Power10 Rollout Plan, Begins Power11

  November 23, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We have been following the development of the Power10 processor with great interest over the past few years, and have been trying to figure out precisely when – and how – Big Blue will put its future processor inside of Power Systems machines. At the Common Europe Online vCEC 2020 event last week, Steve Sibley, vice president and offering manager for the Cognitive Systems division at IBM, talked about IBM’s plan and put some rough dates on it.

  When we talked to Sibley back in May, all he could tell us was that the impact of the coronavirus pandemic …

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• Trinity Guard Unveils New Tools for Linux, Db2 for i

  November 18, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Trinity Guard is on the move. The Houston, Texas, based security software company, which is the spiritual successor to the PentaSafe products, is rolling out a full auditing solution for Linux. It’s also developing a Linux version of its security management tool, TGCentral, with an AIX version up next. Plus it’s months away from releasing an encryption solution for Db2 for i.

  2020 has not been easy for anyone, but it’s not stopping the folks at Trinity Guard from moving forward on its roadmap items. Near the top of that list is increased support for running on Linux, which has …

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• IBM Keeps OpenShift Up To Speed On Power Systems

  November 16, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For more than two years now, as we have previously reported, there have been a number of ways to bring Kubernetes container control to the Power Systems platform, including Docker Enterprise Edition, IBM Cloud Private, and Red Hat OpenShift. In the wake of the Red Hat acquisition, it is pretty clear that OpenShift will be the container environment of choice on IBM System z and Power Systems machines on premises and on these machines as well as X86 iron deployed on the IBM Cloud.

  To that end, we find in announcement letter 220-439 that IBM’s Red Hat unit has …

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• Racksquared Is Another Option For IBM i Private Cloud

  November 2, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that are looking for a private cloud to run their IBM i applications may want to check out Racksquared. The Columbus, Ohio-based managed services provider rents Power and IBM i resources to its clients, who, the company says, turn to it because of the increasing difficulty in finding IBM i expertise.

  Racksquared was founded in 2011 when a 118-year-old restaurant supply distributor called the Wasserstrom Company spun out its IT department into a separate entity. Wasserstrom had outgrown the server room at its headquarters, so it bought and renovated an old AT&T Wireless data center in downtown …

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• You Can Save Money And Get More Performance At The Same Time

  November 2, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  A few weeks ago, we had a chat with John Richards, vice president of Global Asset Recovery Services, the part of IBM that sells certified pre-owned Power Systems, IBM Z and data storage, as well as parts and features, for these devices and is arguably the largest supplier of such equipment in the market. We talked very generally about the differences between the used (sometimes called second-hand) and certified pre-owned (often abbreviated to CPO) markets for Power Systems, and how this market has changed over time, but still can provide significant value to customers – and at a …

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• Your CIO Wants To Move To The Cloud, Here’s How You Really Get There

  October 28, 2020 Dave Wiseman

  The Connectria team presents a three-part series addressing concerns IBM users have about the platform and its future. Part Three: How to work with your CIO who wants to move to the cloud.

  Last month, we continued our discussion of common concerns about the IBM platform by examining security as it pertains to Power Systems. A third and final concept to unpack is a big one – it’s how to address your CIO who wants to move to the cloud.

  When we think about digital transformation, yes, the esoteric buzzword we despise, does that concept fully encompass and explain what …

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• IBM i Turns In Good Numbers For Q3, Bolstering Power Systems

  October 26, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Historically speaking, the Power Systems division, now the Cognitive Systems division officially within IBM, has its worst period of sales in the first quarter of any year and its second worst 13-week revenue run in the third quarter of any year. And true to form, the third quarter of 2020 was not a great one for sales of Power iron, according to our model. That model is derived from IBM’s financial results and other data, and we update it every quarter when Big Blue reports to Wall Street.

  Thanks to the fact that the Power9 generation of machines is entering …

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• The Rest Of October’s Power Systems Software Announcements

  October 19, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The software stack in the Cognitive Systems division, which most of us still call the Power Systems division, is a lot wider and deeper than the IBM i stack, even though IBM i does represent a lot of the software functionality and generates a lot of the revenue stream for Power Systems machinery.

  In addition to the Technology Refresh updates for IBM i 7.4 and IBM i 7.3, which were announced on October 6 and which will be available on November 13, Big Blue also updated a bunch of other pieces of systems software that run on Power Systems, which …

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• IBM Goes All-In On Hybrid Cloud

  October 12, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Well, that was a bit of a surprise, and probably something that only obliquely matters to IBM i shops at the moment, but Big Blue’s top brass has decided to carve out its managed infrastructure services business from Global Services and spin it out as a new, publicly traded company.

  This business, which is tentatively being called NewCo until a real name is provided, is expected to be cut loose in a tax free manner and distributed to IBM’s shareholders by the end of 2021, so we have some time to assess the ramifications, if any, for the IBM i …

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• Tweaks To Power System Iron Complement TR Updates

  October 12, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back in July, IBM upgraded the peripheral I/O on several of its Power9-based servers with more PCI-Express 4.0 bandwidth capacity, and now IBM is offering the increased bandwidth on several machines tuned up for running SAP HANA in addition to making a number of other hardware enhancements and withdrawals.

  In announcement letter 120-054 you will get the feeds and speeds of the updated Power H922, a two-socket, 2U server, and in announcement letter 120-055 you will get the feeds and speeds of the updated Power H924, a two-socket, 4U system. As far as I can tell, the machines are essentially …

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