• IBM Versus GlobalFoundries: A Lawsuit Instead Of The Power Chips Planned

  June 14, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last week, IBM took its former foundry partner, GlobalFoundries, to court in a lawsuit that alleges, in essence, that the company promised to deliver Power9 processors based on 14 nanometer technologies and Power10 processors based on 10 nanometer technologies and had some issues with the former and never delivered on the latter.

  Not only that, IBM’s lawsuit says that it never released GlobalFoundries from its from its promise to deliver a 10 nanometer chip, and when the company promised to shift to 7 nanometer technologies, IBM in good faith worked on developing Power10 chips for these processes and spent at …

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• IBM Grows, Power Systems Slows

  April 26, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The good news, if you are a customer of IBM who wants Big Blue to stick around in the systems business, is that IBM actually saw some growth in its overall business for the first time in two years. This growth was driven in large part by its System z mainframe line, in the first quarter of 2021. The less than good news – but not unexpected – is that the Power Systems business continued to shrink as customers await high-end Power10 systems later this year and low-end Power10 machines early next year.

  In the quarter ended in March, IBM’s …

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• Crazy Idea Number 615: Variable Priced Power Systems Partitions

  April 5, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When you stare down the blank page as much as I have in my career, you learn to not be afraid of that blank page. If you look at it long enough – usually for only a few minutes – ideas flip into existence like quantum particles spinning their curlicues. Most of them are silly, some are utterly useless, but eventually you get one that is worth following to see where it might go.

  So it is with an idea that popped into my head, which was a daydream about IBM creating variable priced partitions on the Power Systems machines. …

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• Skytap To Expand IBM i Cloud Offering

  March 31, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The Power Systems S922 is the go-to server for many cloud providers, including Skytap, which sells access to and manages IBM i, AIX, and Linux environments in Microsoft Azure and IBM Cloud. But as its cloud business grows, Skytap is finding that some of its customers are getting close to hitting their heads on the S922’s processing ceiling, which has precipitated a need for bigger boxes.

  Skytap is currently scoping out the available Power Systems server lineup in anticipation of rolling out a second, larger Power offering, says Skytap Vice President Dan Jones.

  “One of the key hurdles we want …

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• Some More Power Systems Stuff Swept Into The Dustbin

  March 29, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With the Power10 machines starting to come out later this year, the Power9 machines in the field for three years or so depending on the make and model, and the Power8 machines looking long in the tooth (but still technically and economically viable), you have to expect that Big Blue will wind down the sale of more and more older features.

  In announcement letter 923-035, IBM has done just that. Nothing too big, but we think you need to be made aware of it just the same. And as you might expect, IBM also put a plug into the …

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• We Want IBM i On The Future Power E1050

  March 8, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We spend a lot of time at The Four Hundred thinking about the entry and midrange part of the Power Systems line and the many tens of thousands of customers who make use of these machines as their mission critical, back end, system of record platforms. But with the only Power10 machines coming out this year expected to be at the high end – call them the four-socket Power E1050 and the 16-socket Power E1080, if IBM iterates its currently used naming scheme – we have little choice but to start thinking of the big iron now and worry about …

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• Doing The Texas Two Step From Power9 To Power10

  March 1, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  You won’t find an official IBM customer announcement letter on this deal, but we caught wind of it back in late January and we have confirmed with Big Blue that it is indeed offering customers a two-step upgrade track from Power8 and earlier iron to Power10 iron with a middle step on a Power9 machine until the Power10 machines are available starting later this year and into early next year.

  As we reported back on February 1, IBM has indeed been working on something called the “Two-Step Upgrade Program” for customers, which had a name change shift to “IBM Power …

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• IBM Readies Power Systems Announcements For February 23

  February 1, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The word on the street is that IBM is getting ready to do a slew of announcements relating to its Power Systems platform at the end of this month, specifically on February 23. Generally speaking, the announcements are going to focus on IT infrastructure modernization, cloud computing, and application modernization, which are obviously things that a lot of the IBM i base in particular has to consider here in 2021.

  As best as we can figure, IBM is going to tell business partners in the Power Systems channel a bit about what is happening on February 9, two weeks before …

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• 2021 Predictions for IBM i: Part Two

  January 20, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The response from the first batch of IBM i prediction we ran last week was superb. Here’s hoping that the community finds the second batch of predictions equally as worthwhile.

  Chris Wey, the president of the Power Business Unit at Rocket Software, wonders if crystal balls have any power left following the events of last year. “After an unpredictable 2020, the very notion of predictions is called into question,” Wey says. “Still, as an optimist, I believe we will see some incredibly positive outcomes of the past year’s turmoil in the coming year in our space.

  “First, Power systems …

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• Paving The Road Ahead For A Better Ride

  January 4, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We always sit behind the wheel of the present as we drive to the future with our baggage from the past in the trunk.

  It is with this in mind that we contemplate 2021 and the uncertainty of regional, national, and global economies as well as how the coronavirus pandemic will be handled around the world in some pretty tricky political climates. These forces will affect all IBM i customers, of course, and we are not so much interested in describing all of these complex turbulences as they intertwine. What we do want to do is provide a few ideas …

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