In last week’s issue of The Four Hundred, I walked you though the pricing for various sized configurations of the new Power 750+ and Power 760+ midrange servers using IBM‘s dual-chip module (DCM) variant of the Power7+ processor. That just looked at the system hardware costs. This week, as I have done in the past, I want to walk you through how the raw computing, operating system, and Software Maintenance costs compare across each processor SKU and how those costs stack up with prior Power 750 machines.

As has been the case since there was an AS/400, customers

IBM i shops that are seeking a private cloud in which to park production or backup applications and data have a growing number of managed service providers (MSPs) to choose from. One you may not have heard about yet is Worknet, an MSP based in Naperville, Illinois, that houses the IBM i apps of highly regulated organizations, including banks and healthcare companies. Worknet says its “burstable” high availability offering gives it an advantage over other MSPs.

The private cloud business is becoming a commodity play (if it hasn’t already become one), and that’s good for customers. This includes IBM

Larry Ellison knows exactly who he wants to knock down in the midrange systems market, and he is not afraid to call out Big Blue by name when he makes a big processor and systems announcement, as Oracle‘s co-founder and CEO did last Tuesday. That was when Oracle launched its Sparc T5 and M5 processors and six new systems based on those homegrown chips. Ellison did not even mention Hewlett-Packard or Dell once during the launch.

And for good reason. Since 2001, the Unix server business of Sun Microsystems has been the whipping boy and revenue generator for Big

Server vendors are doing a lot these days, but one thing they are doing less of is making servers. IBM, the biggest, richest, and smartest of the bunch has long since become a services and software supplier; hardware is a diminishing part of its trade. Dell is on a similar path, and trying to extract itself from public ownership to duck the requisite transparency and restrictive rules of conduct. Hewlett-Packard? Oracle? Who can say what’s going on in those madhouses? Still, it is safe to guess change is underway. Where does all this leave customers? No place

IBM i business is not the easiest thing to track these days. IBM and its business partners in the sales channel only want to talk in terms of Power Systems, so instead of having numbers to compare from one year to the next, we have estimations and best guesses based on the old finger-in-the-wind method. Some of our insights come from ISVs, IBM i shops, and consultants. Last week, I talked with several ranking members from Avnet, one of the master resellers in the IBM business channel.

Mark Martin is the vice president of marketing and business development for

The prognosticators at Gartner have got out the soft cloth and polished up their crystal balls to gaze into the next two years of IT spending. And they have also rejiggered how much they think the companies of the world blew on IT and telecom hardware, software, and services now that earnings season for the fourth quarter financial results are over.

At the beginning of the year, as we previously reported, Gartner figured that aggregate IT spending globally would come in at $3,588 billion, up 1.2 percent compared to 2011. (We’ll speak in terms of billions because rounding up

The IT marketplace should be on the frontline of innovation and business leadership amongst all other industries. Entrusted with caring for one of an organization’s most valuable assets–data–the IT department is charged not only with the daily tasks of network administration, software development and installation, and maintaining, upgrading, and replacing hardware and software, it also sets the pace for success with the adoption of new technologies and finding better and faster ways to store, retrieve, transmit, and manipulate data.

So it seems natural that IT would be a leader in closing the gap in compensation between the sexes. And the

Companies in the manufacturing, distribution, energy and utility, and oil and gas industries may be interested in a new analytics package recently introduced by IBM. The software and services offering, called Predictive Asset Optimization, aims to forecast when assets in the field–such as trucks, water pipes, or robotic machines–are likely to fail, so that preventive maintenance or preemptive engineering changes can be made, saving the customer millions of dollars.

Well-run companies have always paid attention to maintenance. But the fact is, in this physical world, stuff happens. Cogs in the wheels of industry get gummed up. Engines will get

You never know how good or how bad you’ll be at overcoming obstacles until you’re face to face with one of these hairy monsters with no place to run, no place to hide. You may already know the story of Scott Klement, one of the most robust RPG minds on the planet, an IBM Power Systems Champion, and a guy who is on a quest to overcome adversity. Back in early January, Klement encountered some unplanned downtime.

An illness left him tired and weak, but the unexpected swiftness of his deteriorating health that spiraled downward into something life threatening was

Growing your own talent and developing a motivated, skilled, and qualified workforce should be on the minds of managers of every organization from multi-national corporations to multi-employee small businesses. It is not uncommon for IT managers in IBM midrange shops to wonder out loud where the next generation of business computing whiz kids will come from. What is uncommon is finding IBM midrange shops growing their own talent through partnerships with local tech schools and community colleges. Instead of searching for talent in all the wrong places, there should be a greater emphasis on developing it locally.

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