Top 10, er, 20 reasons to move to IBM i 6.1

Craig Johnson at IBM Systems Magazine has his top 10 list, which morphed into a top 20 list. It starts with a push toward blades and ends with a pitch saying the OS is available on DVD. Here are the top 5. Check out the link for the rest:

1. Enable consolidation of i and x86 servers with an IBM BladeCenter solution. IBM i 6.1 is supported in IBM BladeCenter S and H with BladeCenter JS12, JS22, JS23 and JS43 blades.
2. Reduce impact of planned and unplanned outages with a high-availability solution from IBM. IBM i 6.1 supports the new PowerHA for i disk-clustering solution.
3. Better performance for i and IBM System Storage environments through improved storage-area network (SAN) support. i 6.1 with POWER6 processor based-servers and a new Fibre Channel Adapter can deliver performance with the DS8000 that’s comparable to internal disk.
4. Increased performance for Java and WebSphere applications with IBM i 6.1 enhancements. In Java-application performance tests, IBM i delivered 68-78 percent more transactions per second than i 5.4 running on the same POWER5+ processor-based server.
5. Reduce IT costs with an easy, integrated, Web-based management environment. IBM i 6.1 delivers Systems Director Navigator for i that enables Web-based management. Navigator integrates with IBM Systems Director 6.1 providing a rich management environment for multiple, heterogeneous servers.