• i5/OS V6R1: The TIMI, It Is A-Changing

  August 20, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  By their very nature, technology transitions are difficult. There were many brilliant things about the design of the System/38 and AS/400 minicomputers that are the ancestors of today’s System i platform, but perhaps the most important one is that IBM wove a technology-independent machine interface (TIMI) between the operating system and the underlying hardware. This has made changing the OS layer or the hardware layer a lot easier than is the case with other platforms. But sometimes, the hardware changes so much that even TIMI needs to change. Such is the case with the forthcoming i5/OS V6R1. And when TIMI

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• iSociety Hosts Chat on New DB2 Query Tool

  August 20, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM is getting ready to ship the new DB2 Web Query for System i business intelligence tool on September 14, and last week the iSociety System i advocacy group hosted a Web chat to go over some of the features and field questions about the product. DB2 Web Query is a subset of the WebFOCUS tool from Information Builders and is a long-overdue replacement for IBM’s own Query/400 tool. Doug Mack, the marketing manager for the System i DB2 products at IBM, hosted the Web chat. If you missed the chat, the transcript for the chat is posted here.

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• Gartner Says Software as a Service to Break $11.5 Billion by 2011

  August 20, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With the cost of managing infrastructure and maintaining applications far exceeding the initial costs of systems and applications, and with the ubiquity and low-cost of Internet connectivity, it is no wonder that the market for software as a service, or SaaS as it is sometimes called, is not growing significantly. According to market research estimates made by the IT analysts at Gartner, the worldwide market for software sold as an online service hit $4.2 billion in 2006, and is expected to grow 21 percent to $5.1 billion this year. Gartner is projecting that SaaS sales will more than double

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• Four People Seek Seats on COMMON Board

  August 20, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It may not be as hot a race as the 2008 presidential elections here in the United States, but an election is heating up over at the COMMON midrange user group, which has four people chasing three seats on the board of directors for the organization. COMMON board members serve on a three-year term, and each of the four candidates wants to do his part in helping steer COMMON as it adjusts to the needs of the i5/OS and OS/400 community and to the changing ways that community members socialize and learn. In alphabetical order, the candidates are Dan Kimmel,

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• The New System i Value Packs

  August 20, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With the new Power6-based System i 570 server, announced on July 24, IBM stopped bundling a bunch of software into the base price of the machine to try to make it more attractive and went in the other direction, stripped down all the features and let customers build up a stack of software comprised of only what they need–and want to pay for. The new Value Packs for i5/OS are a harbinger of how the future i5/OS V6R1 will be packaged on enterprise-class servers by the new Power Systems division when that OS arrives in early 2008. With the new

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• Reader Feedback on IBM’s Reorg: The Good Me or the Bad Me?

  August 20, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As is his wont, Brian Kelly struck some nerves with his article last week, IBM’s Reorg: The Good Me or the Bad Me? Here’s a sampling of some of the feedback that readers sent in. Brian: Many thanks for your great IT Jungle article. I believe that you speak for the vast majority of System i (AS/400) customers and the System i ecosystem. IBM clearly has the leading capability in System i hardware, and the woefully trailing capability in GUI applications development, compiler software, and in marketing. You are correct, again, that the best hardware will not save the System

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• TFH Flashback: The Joy of V3R6

  August 20, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Note: This article is reprinted from an April 1995 issue of The Four Hundred. Sometime in late May, according to our sources, IBM business partners and value added resellers will be briefed about the new RISC AS/400s. A week or so later, everybody expects IBM to formally announce the new boxes. Just because the new boxes will be announced in early June, don’t expect to be able to get your hands on one, especially if you are looking to buy a large 9406 system. According to people familiar with IBM’s plans, the very largest RISC AS/400s won’t be generally

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• As I See It: Of Toads and Time

  August 20, 2007 Victor Rozek

  Mark Twain, a man who could find humor in the heartbreak of psoriasis, once offered a simple formula for getting through the day. If the first thing you do each morning is eat a live frog, Twain opined, you can be pretty certain it will be the worst thing that happens to you all day. While a dose of self-imposed morning sickness doesn’t sound too appetizing, Brian Tracy found a more precise application for Twain’s axiom. Tracy thought Twain’s morsel of wisdom so compelling that he used “frog eating” as the metaphorical foundation for a modest book on time management.

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• The System i Gets Price Changes and Withdrawals

  August 20, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The prelude to a new hardware platform and operating system release is often a time when server makers start rejiggering their prices and giving customers the head’s up that upgrades from older technology to relatively new equipment (soon to be displaced, however) are going to be removed from the product catalog at some future date. And so it is with the System i product line this summer. As part of the July 30 announcement letter blitz, IBM changed prices on a slew of iSeries and System i components as well as warned customers that certain hardware and software features would

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• Solaris Coming to the System i?

  August 20, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Many things in the IT world have achieved the status of being zealously supported by a community of companies and users. The OS/400 and i5/OS platform won the minicomputer wars in the 1990s and is staunchly supported by its community. And so is the Solaris variant of the Unix operating system, which achieved zealot status during the dot-com boom, and being the first major Unix to go open source with the Solaris 10 launch more than two years ago only reinforced the zeal. And that is why IBM, Sun Microsystems‘ long-time rival in the server space, last week

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