Oct 17 2008 6:13AM GMT

And there it is: System i down 82%

Mark Fontecchio Profile: Mark Fontecchio

Or so say the revenue figures from the IBM press release on the matter, which came out late yesterday.

As I wrote yesterday before the revenue numbers came out, this was precisely the reason why Ross Mauri, the Power Systems general manager, came out with an open letter to the System i community. Remember: that 82% drop compares all System i servers from the same quarter last year to pre-Power6 System i servers this year.

The “converged System p” revenue — which compared Power6-based servers running AIX and IBM i to the traditional System p servers of the same fiscal quarter last year (which didn’t run IBM i) — increased 7 percent. It remains to be seen whether IBM will continue to call the platform the “converged System p,” or just go to “System p” or “Power Systems.”

Either way, we have two more fiscal quarters of IBM doing this sort of comparison, and then most likely System i revenues will no longer be part of their quarterly announcement.