• Start Where the Data Lives: Best Practices for Taking IBM i Into AI

  October 5, 2026 Doug McMaster Ron Venzin and Gregg Rohaly

  The AI conversation has arrived at the IBM i shop, and in most cases, it did not come in through the computer room door. It came down from the boardroom, or over from finance, or sideways from a sales vice president who watched a demo at a conference and wants to know why the company cannot ask its own order history a question in plain English. The IBM i manager is then handed a question that sounds technical but is strategic: can our core platform play in this, or do we need to replace it to get there?

  That is …

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• Finally: Some Pricing Information On The Power S1112 Entry Server

  September 14, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  UPDATED: The entry “Bonnell+” Power S1112 server based on the Power11 processor – the only machine that has a P05 software tier for the IBM i operating system – has been shipping for six weeks now, and I have been digging around trying to get detailed, feature-level pricing for the new machine. I have yet to find that fine-grained pricing that I love to have my hands on, but I did get some help from some friends in the reseller community to get current prices for six different configurations of the Power S1112 – two tower configurations and four rack …

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• Thinking About Moving IBM i To The Cloud? Don’t Start With The Quote

  August 31, 2026 Josh Patterson

  We get asked a deceptively simple question all the time: “What would it cost to move our IBM i environment to the cloud?”

  It sounds like a pricing question. Usually, it isn’t. Before we start talking about cores, memory, storage, or monthly costs, there’s a much more important question to answer: Why are you considering cloud in the first place?

  Maybe your Power server is approaching a refresh. Maybe your data center contract is ending. Maybe an experienced IBM i administrator is retiring. Maybe your disaster recovery strategy no longer meets the business’s needs. Or perhaps your organization has adopted …

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• Inside The Encryption Key Management Changes In IBM i 7.6

  August 10, 2026 Alex Woodie

  IBM is making significant changes to how it handles encryption keys with IBM i 7.6. The big news is that IBM i shops now have bring-your-own-key (BYOK) support via IBM Key Protect for IBM Cloud offering, which scratches a certain regulatory itch. But IBM has also bolstered how it handles master keys and save/restore keys stored on the IBM i server, which boosts security, but also makes IPLs following DR events more complicated.

  Let’s start with the new bring-your-own-key (BYOK) support for IBM i in IBM Key Protect for IBM Cloud offering. IBM Key Protect is a cloud-based key management …

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• The Power11 IBM i P05 Entry Machine Finally Arrives

  July 20, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The new entry “Bonnell+” Power S1112 server, based on the Power11 processor that IBM introduced a year ago in all of the other Power Systems machines, was revealed last week and will be shipping almost everywhere in the world starting on July 24. The exceptions are that the Power S1112 will ship in Taiwan on September 14 and will ship in China and India starting December 11.

  The other members of the Power11 server family were announced on July 8 last year, and the Power11 lineup has been without a machine that is in the lowest P05 software tier …

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• FalconStor Creates Cloud Clean Room To Prove Backup Recoveries Work

  July 13, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is a bit sad to say this, but a lot of IBM i shops are still relying on tapes to backup their system software as well as their application software and the databases that drive them. There is nothing wrong with tape, and it makes sense to do offsite backups to tape and park them in Iron Mountain or some other facility. But the problem is that recovering from tape is a nightmare and no one knows if the recovery is going to work until the bad day when something goes wrong – through human error or hacking or …

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• More Power Systems Price Hikes, This Time They Are “Directional”

  June 22, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As you well know by now, prices for CPUs, GPUs, main memory, and flash storage have gone completely bonkers thanks to the GenAI system buildout, with systems specially designated for AI workloads now comprising 70.2 percent of the $122.6 billion in system revenues during the first quarter. AI sales would be even larger, and so would sales of traditional systems, had it not been for component shortages that have been consequently driving prices higher. But if there was no shortages to begin with, maybe revenues would also not be so crazy, too, and shipments would be maybe 30 percent to …

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• Big Blue Is Still Talking About Future Power Processors, Which Is Good

  May 18, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The details are really thin, as usual, but IBM is still talking about the advantages that the Power10 and Power11 processors have over other server-class CPUs in the market today, as Power chief architect Bill Starke did at the most recent POWERUp conference in New Orleans. And Starke always ends his presentations with a hint or two about what Power Next or Power Future – what we would call Power12 – might look like.

  Many of the things that Starke talked about during his two presentations at POWERUp 2026 are things that we have been talking about with Starke for …

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• You Have To Speak IBM’s Language If You Want To Be Heard

  May 11, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Like many of you, I had been expecting for Big Blue to deliver the kicker to the entry level “Bonnell” Power10-based Power S1012 that was announced a few years back during the PowerUP 2026 conference. This long-awaited machine will be the only Power11 system that is offered for those many, many IBM i customers in the P05 software tier, and will presumably have a beefier hardware configuration that crosses over into the P10 IBM i software tier.

  POWERUp 2026 came and went, and there was no Bonnell+ kicker and there also was not the expected Technology Refreshes for the IBM …

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• Brace Yourself: Another Power Systems Price Hike Coming May 1

  April 20, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  A few weeks ago, when we talked about the price increases on main memory and flash for Power Systems machines as well as some other price increases, we told you that this would probably not be the end of it. The market for DRAM and flash is so crazy right now that demand is well exceeding supply and that is driving up prices almost continuously. That’s because supply cannot be increased for either.

  To that end, Sam Werner, general manager of IBM Storage, and Ivo Körner, vice president of worldwide sales for IBM Power, Cloud, and Storage, sent out a …

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