• 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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• COMMON Dances To A Fresh New Tune In New Orleans

  May 4, 2026 Alex Woodie

  This wasn’t the first COMMON conference held in New Orleans, but it may have been the best, considering where the IBM i platform is at this particular time and what happened down on the bayou last week.

  For starters, the four-day event attracted about 1,300 attendees, which is a solid increase from the 1,200 that attended last year’s conference in Anaheim, California. But here’s the kicker: About one-third of the COMMON POWERUp 2026 attendees were attending the conference for the first time. In other words, around 400 folks decided that IBM i education and community were important enough for them …

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• Power Systems Still Waiting For The GenAI Bump

  April 27, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With the Power11 systems upgrade cycle only nine months old and with price increases that have been happening monthly since early April 1 and possibly continuing through the end of the year, we expect for the Power Systems business to be up in 2026 for the full year.

  In the first quarter of 2026 ended in March, IBM’s Infrastructure group, which includes sales of servers, storage, operating systems, and used gear, posted sales of $3.33 billion, up 15.3 percent. Gross profits rose by 24.2 percent for the Infrastructure group, to just a tad under $1.9 billion, and pre-tax income for …

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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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• Updates Announced for IBM i BRMS And SMTP Email Client

  April 20, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Big Blue hasn’t yet announced its spring IBM i Technology Refresh (TR), which we told you last week will come a bit later this year to align with IBM’s expected announcement of a new entry-level, P05-class Power11 machine. But that didn’t stop IBM from making other IBM i-related announcements last week, including some important updates to BRMS and the Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) email client.

  With its update for Backup, Recovery, and Media Services for i (BRMS), which IBM announced on April 14, IBM is bolstering the new Web GUI with updated capabilities that will make the product …

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• Spring IBM i Tech Refreshes Will Come A Bit Later This Year

  April 13, 2026 Alex Woodie

  IBM is working on a new Technology Refresh, as it traditionally does this time of year. But the spring TR announcement will not be made before the POWERUp conference takes place at the end of the month, IT Jungle has learned. Instead, the company will be holding off on the spring TR so that it aligns with a broader Power announcement.

  IBM i shops have been conditioned to expect two TRs every year, one in the spring (usually April) and another in the fall (usually October). The spring TR is usually timed to occur before COMMON holds its annual POWERUp …

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• What Can IBM Do To Make The Future Power S1112 Mini System Compelling?

  April 13, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The Power11-based Power Systems lineup remains incomplete, with the single-socket, half-width “Bonnell” system that debuted back in May 2024 still only available with Power10 processors and not yet upgraded to Power11. We know such a machine is in the works, because Big Blue has been clear about the need to ship a machine in the IBM i P05 software tier, the lowest rung on the IBM i ladder.

  We have not heard anything precise about the Bonnell kicker, and we would have thought it would have been launched in February or March. It has not. It is reasonable to expect …

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• IBM Offers Trade-Ins On Storage To Grease The Upgrade Skids

  April 6, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Business partners who want to help customers upgrade their flash storage are pleased that Big Blue has updated a long running trade-in program for various flash, disk, and tape storage products.

  As we previously reported, IBM has just revamped the FlashSystem all-flash array lineup, with the idea of helping customers make-do in a market where prices of main memory and flash memory have all skyrocketed because of exuberant demand on behalf of the hyperscalers, cloud builders, and AI model builders who are all trying to build gigawatt-scale systems to create better models and higher performance inference engines to turn …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 28, Number 11

  March 16, 2026 Doug Bidwell

  The Power11 processors and their systems have in the field since last summer, and for those of you fortunate enough to have a server with that “new car smell,” now is the time to learn about the new processor and systems and figure out how to optimize performance on these machines and take advantage of their special features.

  To that end, IBM has put out a new best practices guide called IBM Power11 Performance Optimization For IBM i to help you begin the processor of tuning up your new machine. You can download it here.

  In addition to this, …

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