Timothy Prickett Morgan
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Expanding The Operating System Matrix For Power10
November 1, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan
As enterprise platforms go, the Power Systems family of machines has had an expansive operating system support matrix. One of the reasons why the Power line has persisted – and its rivals at Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Sun Microsystems did not – is that not only did IBM keep making enhancements to its proprietary AIX and OS/400/IBM i platforms, but two decades ago formally adopted SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux as alternative platforms.
With the launch of the “Cirrus” Power10 processors in the enterprise-class “Denali” Power E1080 in early September, IBM continued its long practice of …
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A Proper Accounting Of The Power Business
October 25, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan
Big Blue might be preparing for the spinout of its Kyndryl managed services company, now slated for early November, and its new financial presentations, which we reviewed two weeks ago, but that task is not yet done and until it is we are still getting the same financial view of IBM in the third quarter of 2021 ended in June. It was not a particularly memorable quarter when it came to IBM Systems group.
But it is looking like IBM is going to be able to pad a better 2022, with Kyndryl taking on a huge amount of software …
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Talking Power Systems Deals With The Boss
October 25, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan
What a relief when you speak the same language with someone in the business. In any business. But particularly with someone in the AS/400 and IBM i business, who has been at it about the same time as you, has seen the same stuff as you, has the same frames of reference as you, and who knows what the hell you are talking about even if they don’t agree with you all the time.
That’s how it is with the boss at UCG Technologies, that being president and founder Jim Kandrac, who is proud of his city of Cleveland and …
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Various Power Systems Updates And Tweaks
October 25, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan
While many IBM i shops have a lot of their core applications on that platform, there are lots of shops that deploy Windows Server for adjacent databases and applications and in other cases some shops have AIX or Linux as well. Windows Server doesn’t run on Power iron, of course, which we have always thought was a shame and still is almost two decades since Windows had a brief showing on Power before Microsoft and IBM pulled the plug.
But the important thing, here in 2021, is that customers have alternatives if they need certain applications and they want to …
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We Have The Whole World Of Cloud In Our Hands
October 18, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan
Cloud is a consumption model more than anything else, but it is also an architecture. What that really means is that for a lot of customers, on premises cloud is a bit different from what are called “public” clouds, which we all know are as proprietary as any System/3X or AS/400 or IBM i on Power Systems ever was. There ain’t nothing at all public about it, and we are trying to break the habit of calling them that. The point is, the big clouds outside of your datacenter look like power utilities, with pricing based on both time and …
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The Shape Of The IBM To Come
October 11, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan
Big Blue is getting ready to spin off its managed services businesses, which represents about a third of its revenue stream and a big chunk of its employee base, into the separate company called Kyndryl and hopes to have this task done by the end of the year. Last week, IBM’s top brass had a virtual meeting with Wall Street to host its Investor Day, and IBM’s chief executive officer, Arvind Krishna, and the rest of the team unveiled a new segment and financial reporting structure that will be put into effect once the Kyndryl spinout is done.
At that …
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Thoroughly Modern: Talking IBM i System Management With Abacus
October 11, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan
If you want the members of your IT department to focus on the core applications that define, run, and improve your business, and they also have to manage your systems, and you have limited budgets to do it all, you have to learn to let go of something. There are only so many hours in a day, only so many days in a year, and only so many people to do the work. Something has to give, and you have to keep what brings the real value.
Having an IBM i platform provides plenty of value to start, as IBM …
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We Need You To Take The 2022 IBM i Marketplace Survey
October 11, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan
It is hard to believe that it is actually 2021, and it is even harder to believe that we are in the final weeks of the 2022 IBM i Marketplace Survey. This is the eighth annual survey, which takes the pulse of the IBM i community and gives us some insight into what you all are up to.
As you well know, the community has to express its needs if it ever hopes to steer IBM’s behavior as well as that of big third-party hardware, software, and services providers. Believe it or not, Big Blue is more open about receiving …
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Early Bird Special For Common Europe Congress Ends October 14
October 11, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan
Copenhagen, which is known as “the happiest city in the world,” has its coronavirus situation under control and will be hosting the Common Europe Congress user group meeting from October 31 through November 3. Unlike the COMMON POWERUp 2021 event, which was supposed to be hosted in person in Virginia Beach, Virginia, as well as online, but has now been switched to a totally virtual event.
Denmark has had its borders open since September 9, and vaccination rates are high and cases are very low. The reason, in part, has to do with high trust in the Danish government and …
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Fresche Buys Abacus To Integrate From IBM i To Cloud To Code
October 4, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan
Last week, Fresche Solutions, arguably the largest provider of application development and modernization tools for the IBM i platform and its predecessors, acquired Abacus Solutions, a long-time provider of cloud and managed services for the same market, giving a new meaning to the word integration in the IBM i brand. Now, with the combination of Fresche and Abacus, we can add an adverb to the intransitive form of the verb: vertically integrated.
Vertical integration is all the rage these days, at least among the hyperscalers and cloud builders that consume half of the IT gear in the world and …
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