IBM System i and Power

COMMON 2009 annual meeting off to a running start

I awoke today in Reno, Nev., to register and cheer on the participants in COMMON User Group’s first 5k run/walk for charity. Some were surprised by the brisk morning air, but the 20+ who participated enjoyed the opportunity to get out of the confines of the Grand Sierra and stretch their legs for a good cause.

First place runner Hany Elemary of Profound Logic Software (right), and event organizer, ringer and marathon runner Dan Kimmel (left), RJS Software and COMMON Treasurer finish up the last portion of the course near the Truckee River before heading to the finish line.

I stood somewhere close to the 4k marker and cheered on the participants while visiting with a couple of attendees who had volunteered to help monitor the course. As we were walking back, I found out I was talking to IBM i educator, Jim Sloan, who shared that his newest CL programming book was published in January. For my networking purposes, this was perfect, and we discussed getting a chapter excerpt for publication on Search400.com so you to get a preview of this resource. Based on some of the reader questions I receive, I know some of you may find this book really helpful.

Speaking of resources, I needed to see what sessions I should check out at the meeting, and started looking through the ambitious schedule of 500 educational events. Some at COMMON have used the term “technical information fire hose” to describe the event, and I have to say, it’s a fairly accurate analogy. I sat down to plot my course for Monday and discovered that there are two dozen concurrent sessions during each time block to choose from!
Continued »

IBM’s expanded Power Rewards program includes System i

IBM has announced an expansion of its Power Rewards program, which hands out “points” to customers who migrate from other server vendor platforms.

The expansion, which includes migrations to IBM System i, now allows customers to migrate from x86 server platforms. Previously you could only do it from comparable server-processor platforms such as Sun Microsystems’ Sparc and Intel’s Itanium. The reward is slightly less, however: 500 “points” per x86 core compared to up to 4,000 per core when moving off Sparc or Itanium. That makes sense, obviously, because Sparc and Itanium are more powerful chips than their x86 counterparts, or presumably so.

This might be a good opportunity for IBM System i shops to migrate whatever x86 workloads they can onto the System i.

How does the point system work? Essentially the points are equal to one dollar each, and can be used to buy software licenses, IBM services, or other products from IBM. When I asked Scott Handy, a marketing vice president in the IBM Power group, why they didn’t just give cash back, he gave a dodgy answer about how customers might want to use points for a wide range of things. I would imaging that IBM just wants customers to spend points through its own rewards system rather than spending cash elsewhere.

Handy said they saw 570 migrations to Power from other platforms last year. He expects more this year, saying that IBM has “customers coming to us worried about the roadmap at Sun, HP and Intel.”

There have been some processor delays, with Intel’s quad-core Itanium, codenamed Tukwila, having been delayed, as well as Sun’s newest UltraSparc chip, a potentially 16-core processor codenamed Rock, having seen delays also. Both are expected out this year, so IBM is making its aggressive move now.

Migrations from other vendors’ x86 to IBM Power aren’t brand new, according to Handy. He said that over the 570 migrations to Power last year, about 30 came from x86.