• IBM i on Google Cloud Appears To Be Stuck in Alpha

  February 17, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Companies that want to run IBM i workloads in Google Cloud will have to wait a bit longer, as the public cloud service is still in limited alpha, with no signs that it will become generally available any time soon.

  It has been close to three years since we first broke the news about the partnership between IBM and Google Cloud. At the inaugural POWERUp conference in San Antonio, Texas, in May 2018, IBM i chief architect Steve Will publicly discussed plans the two companies had made to run IBM i and AIX instances on the Power Systems servers …

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• Skytap Offers Deals and Discounts in IBM, Azure Clouds

  February 10, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM is offering up to $500 in free money for new customers who sign up for Skytap on IBM Cloud, a joint infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offering between the two companies that allows customers to run IBM i, AIX, and Linux workloads in the IBM Cloud. Meanwhile, Skytap is offering a free upgrade to enterprise support for the remainder of 2021 for customers who sign up for its Power on Azure cloud IaaS offering.

  Skytap landed on IT Jungle’s radar in late 2018, when it announced it was building a “true cloud” offering for IBM i. …

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• Taking The Pulse Of The Used Server And Storage Market

  February 3, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  (Sponsored Content) Those of us who buy certified pre-owned vehicles know a secret that some of our peers in the datacenter also know about buying certified pre-owned servers and storage: You can get a lot better bang for the buck by staying one generation behind, and not really sacrifice much in the way of performance and features.

  And in the case of IT, unlike the situations with families buying vehicles, some customers have to stay two generations or more behind because of the limitations of their application software. And so they absolutely need to stay back on vintage …

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• Tapping The Sky For Disaster Recovery

  July 6, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The killer app for IBM i in the cloud, at least for the next several years, is very likely going to be disaster recovery and high availability. Not just because it is so much less expensive to provide these vital infrastructure services on the cloud than it is on premises, but because so many people still need DR and HA but cannot afford it.

  The cloud is changing that, and a partnership between Skytap, the upstart provider of IBM i server instances in the cloud, and Maxava, the now established but once upstart provider of HA and DR software …

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• How SAP HANA Helps Keep IBM i Strong

  February 24, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It has been a good 12 months for Power Systems in the cloud. Not only did Big Blue launch entry Power8 and high-end Power8 machines on its IBM Cloud supporting IBM i and AIX and promise to get high-end Power9 iron on its cloud as well, but Google, Skytap, and Microsoft also launched Power9 iron on their respective public cloud and offered to run Linux, AIX, and IBM i on these machines. Last week, it was the turn for enterprise software giant SAP, which is adding high-end Power E980 systems to its own cloud services so customers can run HANA …

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• Google Launches Power Systems Cloud, But Not Yet for IBM i

  January 22, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Google last week officially unveiled IBM Power Systems for Google Cloud, a new infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offering that will allow customers to run AIX, Linux, and IBM i workloads and manage it from their familiar Google Cloud accounts. Google says that AIX and Linux are ready to go, but says that IBM i customers will have to wait just a little longer to get in on the cloud action.

  The general availability of IBM Power Systems on Google Cloud has been years in the making. Google was one of the earliest enrollees in IBM’s Open Power initiative, and …

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• There’s Always A New Last Laugh With Legacy

  January 13, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  On my bookshelf beside my desk is a shelf that has all of my relevant AS/400 books and copies of the first decade of The Four Hundred, back when it was a monthly newsletter printed on paper. Sometimes, when I get stuck for ideas, I page through my history and yours, and I am often amazed at the wealth of information that myself and my colleagues – as well as many, many sources – helps us to create. AS/400s were a lot more expensive than IBM i machines, and helping people save money was our primary mission, and there …

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• Join Us For The IBM i On The Public Cloud Webinar

  December 4, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  After so many years of waiting, it looks like IBM i shops are going to have a wide variety of options when it comes to acquiring true cloud computing to either replace or augment their on premises systems.

  IBM, Google, Microsoft, and Skytap all are offing slices of Power9 machines, which complement the cloudy and hosted infrastructure that has been available for a number of years from Connectria, iInTheCloud, UCG Technologies, LightEdge Solutions, Data Storage Corp, Source Data Products, Secure Information and Services, and First Option IT have offerings that fall on the spectrum from traditional hosting to cloud as …

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• The Cloud Breathes New Life Into Managed Service Providers

  November 6, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There are a number of hotbeds of technology in the IBM midrange – Rochester, Toronto, Atlanta, and Austin are the biggies – and there is a very large number of business partners who have been helping customers try to figure out each step in the advancing progression of technologies that have come out of Big Blue and its partners for decades.

  The business partners tend to cluster around the hotbeds, as you might imagine, and we are pleased that after all of these years, there are still a lot of IBM i partners out there who do everything from help …

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• It’s Getting Cloud-i In Here

  June 10, 2019 Alex Woodie

  For many years, the only cloud option that IBM i customers had available to them were private clouds delivered by managed service providers (MSPs) or IBM business partners. But the IBM i community is now on the cusp of gaining not one but three public cloud options, delivered by Skytap, Google, and IBM itself – and more IBM i public clouds could be on the way.

  It’s no secret that IBM has been seeking to place IBM i servers in the big three public clouds managed by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. And in …

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