• Google Close to Launching IBM i Cloud Service, Will Says

  June 4, 2018 Alex Woodie

  One of the laments of Power chip types everywhere is the lack of a public cloud service for Power applications. While Linux and Windows folks can run their X86 workloads on multiple public clouds, the opportunities for hosting IBM i, AIX, or Power Linux workloads are limited to so-called private clouds. But according to IBM i chief architect Steve Will, that could soon be changing.

  While neither IBM nor Google have made any official announcements about Google running IBM i in its public cloud, Will talked openly about the relationship between the two tech giants at COMMON‘s PowerUp conference …

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• Getting Hyper And Converged With IBM i

  May 14, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The hallmark of the System/38 and its progeny, the AS/400, iSeries, System i, and IBM i platforms, is that these machines came fully integrated with all of the operating system, database, management, and development tools necessary to run a modern business. Integrated did not mean that these pieces were all sold as a single bundle, mind you, but they snapped together with good fit and finish and allowed companies to not have to become masters of the system code and could therefore be craftsman for the application code that actually ran the business.

  The AS/400 really set the pace for …

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• Cognitive Systems Hardware Business Gets A Boost

  March 5, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As 2017 came to an end, X86 server shipments and revenues surged, and IBM’s System z14 mainframes came to market and Big Blue got a much-needed injection of revenues and profits in its Cognitive Systems hardware business.

  While IBM did start shipping some initial Power9 iron as the year came to an end, shipments are not going to start in earnest until March, when the “ZZ” entry Power Systems machines announced in February start shipping. In the quarter, and more or less consistent with what IBM said recently in its own financial reports, IDC believes that Big Blue had $2.69 …

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• IBM i Server Less Risky for Enterprises, IBM Claims

  February 28, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Last year we told you about an IBM-sponsored study that concluded it was much more cost effective to run a mid-size company on IBM i servers than X86 servers running Windows and Linux. It turns out that, at the same time, IBM published a similar comparison for high-end enterprise systems that concluded the IBM i server’s superior uptime saves enterprise users millions of dollars. However, the results should be taken with a grain of salt.

  Just like the mid-size server comparison conducted by Quark + Lepton last year, its enterprise study sought to compare how different server platforms would fare …

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• IBM Power Champions: Showing Passion For The Platform

  February 7, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Having a job working on the IBM i-Power Systems platform isn’t easy. Compared to the vast Intel X86 ecosystem, IBM i folks make up a tiny, oft-overlooked minority. That’s one reason why it’s so important to have strong and passionate leaders that the wider installed based can look up to. Along that vein, last week IBM unveiled its 2018 class of Power Systems Champions, which includes a good number of passionate IBM i types.

  IBM named 60 Power Systems Champions for 2018. Out of those 60 Champions, 22 are new to the program, while 38 are returning. Twenty-six of the …

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• More On That Power8 Core Activation Deal

  November 13, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In days gone by, which unfortunately I remember very well, it was not that difficult for any of us to find out what the pricing on every single piece of hardware and software was that comprised an IBM system. The difficulty with IBM’s very sophisticated pricing databases was reckoning how the many pieces fit together to build a system.

  Pricing information for Power Systems iron is a bit harder to come by these days, and as far as I know the pricing databases that I had access to for more than two decades were re-routed to configurators that could only …

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• Crazy Idea # 542: Port IBM i To The Mainframe

  September 18, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In case you didn’t know it, and why would you care, IBM launched the new System z14 mainframe back in June, was talking about the new z14 motors it uses in August, and has just last week launched the LinuxOne “Emperor II” Linux-only mainframe variant of that platform. The machine, as always, has some impressive engineering. And it got me to thinking. Which is always dangerous.

  Here is a crazy idea. No, this is really crazy, unlike some of my other inspirations, which of course make perfect sense. Maybe IBM should converge the Power Systems and System z lines, and …

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• IBM i’s TCO Advantage Widens, According to Reports

  September 13, 2017 Alex Woodie

  IBM recently published a new report that claims the total cost of ownership (TCO) of an IBM i server over three years is dramatically lower than the equivalent Windows or Linux setups. It’s not the first such study IBM has done over the years, but what’s interesting is the gap appears to have widened considerably compared to a similar study six years ago.

  In the latest TCO study, research and management consulting firm Quark + Lepton measured how much it would take hypothetical businesses to buy and manage three sets of servers: a Power Systems server running IBM i 7.3 …

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• IBM Flashes the Cache On External Storage

  September 11, 2017 Alex Woodie

  IBM put more a little flash in its storage, specifically its high-end DS8000 arrays, which got new solid state drive options that will boost raw flash storage close to 3 petabytes in a single installation. Big Blue also cached in with its Storwize V7000, which now features up to 256 GB of RAM, among other new features.

  Let’s begin the news with the Storwize V7000, which is an X86-based storage system that’s becoming increasingly popular among midsize and large IBM i shops that are looking to consolidate storage but who can’t justify the added expense and complexity of the high-end …

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• The Power Neine Conundrum

  July 24, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If you take a very liberal interpretation of what the term cognitive systems means, including database, middleware, analytics software and the underlying system hardware and software, then IBM has spent untold tens of billions of dollars – probably hundreds of billions, really – creating its Cognitive Systems stack. We wonder what all of that analytics and machine learning software would say, with Watson’s voice of course, if it was pointed at IBM’s entire financial and technical history.

  What is the prognosis, Doctor Watson?

  We here at IT Jungle are an optimistic lot, and we realize that IBM, like many of …

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