Common - A users group

IBM really not ready for the letter i

While in Nashville at COMMON I mentioned to IBM that someone and maybe more than one person needs to work on taking out all the old System i, iSeries, and eeeek AS/400 terms out of the OS and the IBM.com web site.

I hate to report it but it’s not happening like I would like it to. If this were Apple they would have had this all done while we were in the session but IBM’s web site has always been a tangled mess in much need of a comb.

Take this set of pages for instance. LINK 

And how the heck do I find the i from the main page? What gives IBM? Why is it so dang hard to find what you do? Wht do you hid it all from the customer and not just the now customer what about the next customer? If I can’t find it and I have been a customer for over 18 years how is “Johnny College Student” or “New IT Guy” going to find out what the hell Power is and what I can run on it. MAKE IT SIMPLE. I am starting to fall on the side of the old AS/400 guys who think you could not market water to people stuck in an oven…….COME ON!

Bytware’s i5virus Nominated for Webby - Please sign up and VOTE

So it’s not everyday that an IBM vendor gets nominated for advertising, and I know IBM might never fall into that category. It’s a cold hard fact of life. IBM has never attempted to really be bold in advertising. I digress. Bytware on the other hand has made is a bad habit to be bold, and to make advertising campaigns that “suck you in” and hold you captive until you reach the bloody end. They have gone the normal route and given away things over the years but the recent ads and videos on YouTube have been fun. NEWS

Link to System i News Blog Post

Please sign up on the Webbey Awards site and vote for them. I really want to see them win and it would only make other i based companies think about doing more to reach the world and not just the 7 customers they have now.

Also take a look at the i5Virus Game.

Search400.com - Power Systems Announcment Shines at COMMON

LINK to Article written by David Vasta (aka ME)

Here are some highlights:

“Nashville, Tenn., is traditionally known for its country music heritage. But to attendees of the recent Common conference, it will also be known as the place where System i, iSeries and AS/400 hardware were laid to rest and reborn as Power. “

“During the town hall meeting we heard talk of unification, single hardware platform and the i as the center of the OS offering for the new Power equation. IBM decided that Common was the place to let this cat out of the bag, and looking back it was more like a boxcar full of tigers.  “

“The biggest question I walked away asking is what do we do to welcome our newfound brothers and sisters in the AIX and Linux on Power communities?”

I dedicated this article to Al Barsa Jr who will be missed in and around the COMMON Community.

The day the System i went away - Bye Bye System i

The title is missleading. The System i is dead, I said it, it’s dead. The new OS is called i. The new server is called POWER.

i + AIX +LINUX = Runs on POWER

Since I started in this career path in 1990 I was constantly told by “others” the AS/400 is dead, then the iSeries is dead, after that the System i is dead. So now it’s dead right?

Wrong.

It’s larger than all the other systems in it’s space.Today during the Town Hall Meeting at COMMON, Mark Shearer released a gigantic can of industrial sized whoop ass on the competition. I know I have said it before and I meant it but this is the right move at the right time. The System p and System i become POWER. The i5/OS has become i, yeap just i. See it’s simple.

Mark showed a slide that was one of my favorites, where is showed IBM Power trending up while HP and SUN were both trending down and not even close to the number of installations or server IBM had. This gap is going to grow wider now and anyone thinking of moving off the i to Sun or HP should be sent home and consider a new line of work. IBM is the owner of the midrange space and now with a entry level server and a blade that runs any of three OSes, i, AIX, and Linux is just way to powerful a statement for the Solaris and HPUX people to ignore.

IBM also showed off the Power blades for the “S” Blade Center. The idea some 18 years ago of running a i on a card about the size of an old SPD card or laptop was a silly thought. Now if I wanted to put my Websphere AIX server, my JD Edwards i server and my Linux File and print server all in one foot print with disk I can and I can do it with POWER. So what about Windows? You can place intel based bladed in the “S” and run it there too, right next to the i, AIX, and Linux.

What does David think about this move?

We now have a name that can work for the OS/400, i5/OS and it’s i, just i and it works for me. The i is for buisness logo is awesome. All the new logos are awesome and very nVidia like. I have been in the loop with IBM and nothing they have told me about today has made me think negative things at all. These changes are all what most of the forward thinking people in the community have been thinking all along.

As I get more details I will share them, the event was worth the price of admission. I am a proud member of the i community and today was what most people call an industry earthquake. IBM took it’s most powerful assets and leveraged them into POWER!

We hop to see many many more combined advertising and educational activities in the future, while IBM promised it I still don’t know if they have a plan. This was all very fuzzy and very PC at the same time. I would have liked to have seen a plan for advertising, and after years of being blasted for not doing much you would have thought they would have shown up with a marketing plan. That would be my only comment about the new release.

Lastly someone at IBM needs to take the i OS and find all the places where it says AS/400, OS/400, iSeries, System i, or anything other than POWER or i to remove it. The i needs a clean up.

Thanks IBM for a great COMMON!

Maxed Out - Chris is a much better writer than I so please step over and read his post too.

Live from COMMON - Day 2 - Monday

Monday was pretty good. I arrived at my first session I was giving late and that threw me. I hate being late. The I think the whole session was odd and I was really uncomfortable. I then about mid session realized my slides needed to be reworked. Maybe next year I will be in better form. Thanks to all that showed up.

The Opryland Hotel is huge and I would say poorly laid out. The map they offer is just pathetic and is unusable. I don’t think this is the COMMON staff’s fault, Opryland and Gaylord are just bad at what they do. Of course when you ask employees of the hotel they are also lost so that lets you know how hard it is to get around this damn place. I love the water and vegetation in the hotel but the sound of water is starting to piss me off when I walk around, you can’t hear yourself think or hear the person you are with.  While I am complaining. I woke up on Monday jumped in the shower and mind you had not really been in my room and since I have been in the bathroom, but like most guys not with the lights on I had not noticed that there were dirty used hand cloth and towels in there. I am not weird but it kind of freaked me out. Plus one one “used” if you know what I mean. Gross. The best part is I asked the housing person from COMMON what I should do and they made the same face I did and asked that I report it to the front desk so I did.

The girl at the front desk didn’t seem as grossed out as everyone else had been and then just flat out asked, “So what do you want me to do about it?”

Not wanting to beg or be an arse I left that up to her. They gave me a free meal? Hey how about a free night lady. Your cleaning staff forgot to take the last jerks dirty “used” towels out of the bathroom and grossed me out and you want to feed me now. Again I am not happy here with the hotel or the staff.

I did get introduced by IBM as one of the important System i bloggers and this someone from IBM is pretty high on the food chain. It’s not like some SE was saying it. This person is 4 or 5 down from the top and was introducing me to someone right above him. What an honor.

All in all a good day. I got to hang out with some new people, again see some old faces and learned a little bit.

COMMON Day 1 - Good things are coming?

I woke up early in Charlotte, piled myself into my car and drove from Charlotte to Atlanta to Chattanooga and arrived in Nashville around 2:00 CST. The Opryland Hotel is entirely to huge. I will go into why I don’t like the hotel and how they fail as a good hotel for conventions from my first impressions.

COMMON on the other hand is set up really well. One day Hotels will set up their conventions so that are not mazes.  I always love coming to COMMON and seeing all the people who are here because they love the System i.

When I arrived and signed in I saw a few people I had looked forward to seeing. Everything is right where it should be. The Book store is in place and the Education table is up.  After wandering around for a bit shaking hands and saying hello we all ventured over to the main hall for the opening session.

The opening session was impressive.  I want to say there were over 1000 people in there if not more. I would like to say that I want the Opening Session to be exciting. Randy Default is not an exciting speaker. While I respect that fact that he is the president of COMMON I don’t think he should be speaking to get people excited. He is a very direct and scripted speaker. To start of with he covered some of the most boring information alive.

At some point he handed over the floor to Mark Shearer from IBM, while Mark is excited about the brand he is not very animated. I willpost what was covered in detail later in the blog.

There is some big info coming this week, they all hinted around to it and we all find out on Tuesday morning about the big news.

After the Opening Session which IMHO was a snooze and covered a bunch of crap I already knew. They opened the Expo floor, which is the same old same old. Got to see some old faces, The booths keep getting smaller. The food was pretty good on the floor. I am trying to eat better while on the road. It ain’t easy but I am going to try. I am also on my own dime this week so eating FREE food is cheaper than paying for it.

More updates later.

COMMON - Driving to Nashville

I am going to be driving to Nashville on Saturday! COMMON starts Sunday @ 9 AM for the SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) with a wonderful breakfast put on by the COMMON staff. What a nice thing to do.

I am going to tell you this now. You need to pay attention to this blog. Something huge is coming from IBM, I can feel it and when I get the scoop I am going to post it here! It’s a gut feeling and I have nothing to base it on but the “chatter” is really odd right now and I think we are looking at a huge news week next week for the System i community.

Stay tuned!

Week before COMMON

It’s the week before COMMON and everything has gotten quiet. Next week should be filled with all kinds of new details as to the direction of IBM and the System i. Anyone want to make any predictions?

System i - Something big is about to happen at COMMON this spring

So if your doing any reading around the community you’re starting to get in tuned with some big things are about to happen at IBM and inside the System i world. This COMMON I predict will end up being another landmark event.

“I’ve been watching and reporting on IBM and the System i world for about a decade, and basically, when two high-powered IBM executives get on stage at the same time for some kind of meeting or announcement of an initiative — in this case, Mark Shearer and Ross Mauri — something big is going down. COMMON members will definitely want to attend this Town Hall Meeting.” and he also said this, “IBM will host a special Town Hall Meeting, where COMMON says Shearer, as well as Ross Mauri, IBM’s general manager of IBM Power Systems, will make a special announcement of an important initiative, ‘The New Power Equation’.”

Chris Maxcer, NEWS Daily Editor, System i Network, Penton Media, Inc.

I don’t have to clue you in as to why Mark and Ross are going to be on the same stage do I? Since the renaming of the systems in 2000 there has been that ever present, often ignored theory that the System i is going to go away and everything will end up being some AiX-i5/OS mutant that can run both workloads. I never thought it would happen quiet like that but over the past few years there has been some movement to this moment in time. When the lines between the System i and System p are going to be blurred. We have reached that point.

I have been known to make Macworld predictions before and have been pretty good at them but nothing huge really comes out of these meetings that we don’t already know much about. The 515 and 525 came out last year. We all knew a box to replace the old 170 and 270 line was coming but the surprised us all with the way they were charging for it.

After thinking about it I am not going to make any predictions about COMMON. It could be fun but I don’t think we need to talk about it. I do think we will see the platforms merge so that there is one hardware offering and many OS offerings. I hope they also port Ubuntu Server to power.

Saving trees at COMMON this year

I have decided not to let COMMON print my sessions so that they can save paper. If you want to have a hand out at my sessions you will need to print it out and bring it with you. I will have that posted soon. I am finding this years sessions harder to get done/perfect as it’s my first year giving most of them and I have to rewrite most of them from scratch.

Let’s talk about that for a bit too. Some people would ask why are you not having COMMON print those handouts and I ask, why would you want them to print all those handouts when we are knee deep in the digital age and your still wanting handouts to doodle on in my sessions?

Continued »