I am going to take a break from the price/performance comparisons between earlier Power machines and the new Power8 systems and talk about something a little bit different from but still intimately related to the performance that customers can expect from the latest IBM i operating system releases as they run on the new iron and on older Power7 and Power7+ machines. The issue is threading, and IBM has done some pretty clever things to help the operating system and processors juggle more work and boost throughput.

Most modern processors have some form of simultaneous multithreading, or SMT,

If you struggled with virtualization with your Power7 box, you might want to improve your skills in that regard with Power8, which brings an even more heavy reliance on virtualization. On the plus side, the massive compute and I/O capacities of Power8 open up new possibilities in the analytics world. For IBM i shops, that means taking seriously the potential to run new analytics workloads right next to your transactional loads.

Analytics and virtualization were the highlights of a recent conversation on Power8 with Tim Klubertanz, a senior IBM Power Systems architect at Evolving Solutions, and formerly of IBM

Row column access control (RCAC) is the new set of security tools in town. They were released because the IBM midrange systems are not Fort Knox in a box. Even shops that have their security policies dialed in (and most of them don’t), RCAC, which became available in IBM i 7.2, is another layer of security that provides options to counter measures that are more expensive and detrimental to performance. If regulatory compliance concerns you, RCAC is particularly valuable.

Even if data leaks and security audits aren’t your biggest concerns, there are lessons that are better learned before trouble

Jack Kennedy joked that he had the best of both worlds: a Harvard education and a Yale degree. I have neither. Nor, I’ll wager, do you. Which means that if you’re a recent graduate you’re already lagging behind the competition. That wasn’t always the case, but sometimes good timing is more valuable than a good education.

Take me for instance. Like others of my generation, I rode the crest of the American experience. My life was formed (and transformed) by the availability of affordable housing, low-cost education, jobs with perks, and medical care that didn’t require choosing between illness and

Innovators earn their reputations by making things happen. They not only succeed at knocking down walls that hold back business, they pursue ideas that lead to results. Enterprise IT is a great proving ground. Sometimes it seems like a fairy tale of overnight success, but seldom, if ever, is that true. To find innovation in IBM i shops, check the attendance sheet at the RPG & DB2 Summit. People there are working for companies that understand how innovation happens.

The next Summit is scheduled for September 30 through October 2 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was announced last week that

I want to congratulate the whole team at IT Jungle for your excellent and aggressive coverage of IBM i technology and business concerns. (I didn’t check all the To: boxes in this web form, but please share my comments with your whole team, as may be appropriate.)

IT Jungle has become my primary source of wake-up calls about IBM business and the i operating system. In my opinion, you have become the new leader for timely technical information. You are making me look really good at my company for “my” ability to stay ahead of the curve in managing our

A published report in Bloomberg News May 27 described IBM as in a problematic position with the Chinese government. At risk are the large server contracts Big Blue has within the banking industry. According to Bloomberg, the Chinese government may force state-owned banks to remove IBM servers because of a perceived threat to national financial security. The report cites “people familiar with the matter” pointing the finger at the intensifying dispute between the United States and China stemming from allegations of spying.

This unfolding drama involving IBM was revealed a week after five Chinese military officers were indicted by

The good news is that server shipments continued to rise in the first quarter, despite a slew of pressures weighing down some of the economies of the world. The bad news is that revenues are still dropping.

In the first quarter, the box counters at Gartner reckon that server unit shipments rose 1.4 percent to 2.36 million machines, but sales were off 4.1 percent across all server sizes and types, with only $11.36 billion in total revenues.

For its part, IBM is being hit with a kind of triple witching effect. The System z mainframes are in the middle of

Online education may not be ready to replace the classroom experience, but the line between virtual and real continues to fade. I’ve been wondering how this applies to IBM i education at the collegiate level. At last count, there were fewer than 100 colleges in the United States with a curriculum that included one or more classes that even mentioned IBM i. Many of the instructors say those classes are on life support due to small enrollment and college administrators who don’t believe the i is relevant to students being trained in computer science in 2014.

There is a need

As part of the series of hardware announcements that Big Blue rolled out in May, the FlashSystem line of all-flash arrays that IBM got through its acquisition of Texas Memory Systems was updated. Among other new features, the new arrays have faster ports linking back to servers and can now be equipped with skinnier flash modules. The arrays also start at a lower initial capacity, which gives them a lower initial price and therefore makes the more amenable to the budgets of midrange and enterprise shops who want to have shared flash but who don’t want to have to lay