Ross Mauri tackles System i questions in chat

Ross Mauri, the general manager of IBM Power Systems, held forth at a fireside chat at iSociety earlier this week. The full transcript of the chat is worth reading. Hat tip to David Vasta for the heads-up.

Here are a few excerpts of the transcript. On early feedback of System i blades:

so far we have a small number of customers using i blades, but we are getting good feedback from key early users, both in Bladecenter S and H chassis. For example BC-H … Websphere on i on multiple blades appears to be a popular choice, for BC-S … we see customers are mixing i blades and x86 blades to build a combined infrastructure. We just completed our first round of worldwide education on blades with business partners. We expect that to pay off in 2009. We are also investing in additional blade support virtual tape and new disk options … so we will hit some key customer requirements for blades in the first half of 2009

On virtual System i partitions:

feedback from customers says that the virtual i partitions support is one of the most exciting new capabilities. Virtual partitions enables you to run multiple images of IBM i without dedicated hardware, so it’s great for people who are testing apps

And finally, the potential role of the IBM i operating system in cloud computing:

we already have many partners offering IBM i based applications as a service - those partners are everything from small ISVs .. to the largest … ie Oracle, JDE. the large ISVS especially like this because it allows them to reach down into small and medium businesses for the future as we move to cloud computing … IBM i will be participant