The heat is on. For all the talk about IT integration and innovation, words that get casually tossed around as if saying them was doing something, there is progress being made in the area of application modernization. The time for talk is turning into the time for action in the IBM AS/400 community, which IBM has renamed the iSeries, the System i, and now just IBM i. The lower case i, IBM used to be fond of saying, is for integration and innovation.

Integration and innovation don’t come easy, despite all the promises that say they will. However, advancements in

The big iron boxes in IBM‘s Power-based server lineup have always tended to come to market later than midrange and entry boxes. With the AS/400 and its progeny being predominantly a midrange platform, and the RS/6000 and its progeny proliferating in the low-end and only gradually coming to be known as a big iron box, it stands to reason that Big Blue would start the Power7 launch in the middle, with the Power 750, 770, and 780 servers.

That said, when it comes to generating revenues and lots of profits, you just can’t beat the big iron boxes like

Comparisons are odious, the old saying goes. But, that’s what we do whenever we are buying any kind of electronics, and servers are no exception. IBM, like every other server maker with a new product, wants to show off the performance and scalability of its new Power7-based servers. But it doesn’t want to make the comparisons too easy between the i and AIX platforms, or between the i versions of the boxes and other machines like X64 servers running Windows, as has been the case for many years.

But to IBM’s credit, the company provides its rPerf and CPW

Gerry Cullen watched the Piper Cherokee fly over his head and dive into a building where the Internal Revenue Service had offices. It was February 18, and Cullen was outside a Marie Callender’s where he had gone for breakfast. A pilot as well as a pie lover, Cullen knew the Cherokee was going full throttle. What he couldn’t tell is that the teahad pilot’s deadly journey may have begun nearly 25 years earlier, when Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan helped change the Federal tax code in an effort to save IBM $60 million while squeezing freelance computer programmers for a

The way disk array storage vendors have been talking for two decades, you would think that the day would never come when storage revenues would cease growing. Well, the economic meltdown last year sure saw that trend come to an end. But spending has taken off again as 2009 came to a close, and while it is too early to call this a recovery, much less a return to high growth, there certainly is more optimism in the storage racket now than a year ago.

“Although 2009 might have gotten off to a rough start, it ended on a strong

You may have heard this from some other sources, but just in case: The Rochester Post Bulletin reported recently that some more cuts were going to occur. . . no comment from IBM, as usual.

I have heard from an inside source that IBM is closing the Rochester iSeries Briefing center, the Rochester iSeries Benchmarking center, and the Graphics Design center. The current staff has 30 days to find a job in IBM or they’re gone.

The affected people are among the top iSeries people in the industry and to let them go is the height of folly, but so

IBM is doing its best to foster a new company saying: “Nobody gets fired for buying IBM security.” After being named the best security company by a leading security magazine, Big Blue confirmed why it’s among the leading security research, consulting, and product development organizations when it unveiled a slew of new SIEM and network security tools, completed another security-related acquisition, and announced the formation of the IBM Institute for Advanced Security. Not bad for a week’s work.

The IT security-focused SC Magazine (www.scmagazine.com) named IBM the “best security company” of the year for 2010 two weeks ago

Maybe we should just call it Google/400 and get on with it?

Not content with owning the search market and expanding into office suites and smartphone and soon netbook and smartbook operating systems, cash-drenched Google is living up to the enormity of its name and unlimited aspirations by expanding its cloud computing efforts to include actual business applications with its Google Apps Marketplace.

As you can see from the Apps Marketplace site, it has that austerity that we have all come to know and love. These are not ERP systems, mind you, but for plenty of small businesses living

If you are one of the avant garde of the i customer base that is using a mix of BladeCenter Power-based blade servers to run i 6.1 applications, or if you have some rack-based Power Systems machines mixed with System x boxes, then IBM has a new half rack for you.

The new S2 25U half rack, which is detailed in announcement letter 110-064, takes standard 19-inch server, storage, and networking gear, and comes on casters so you can move it around. The rack has a solid top with access holes for passthrough cables, lockable doors and side panels

If you have found yourself wondering why IBM‘s top brass seem to do everything in their power to prop up the company’s stock, the answer has always been the same since the 1980s: because that’s how they make a fortune personally.

Nothing illustrates this more–and perhaps frustrates the i community more–than the company’s annual proxy statement, which outlines how the top executives at Big Blue are compensated. As is the case in just about every public company I have ever heard of, executive compensation is tied to the performance of the company, more or less. But the actual compensation