IBM's April 2 and Earlier 2008 System i ( i for Business) Announcements 

For  

Northeast Pennsylvania Computer Users Group 

May 15, 2008 

Luzerne County Community College 

Brian W. Kelly  

IBM has been announcing major changes to its (AS/400, iSeries, System i) product line from the beginning of this year. These include V6R1 of the OS, and major changes to the way it sells software such as IBM AS/400 Query and even SEU/DFU as well as your compilers.  IBM is clearly in the software business and it makes a lot more revenue on software than System i hardware.  The good news is that to be in the software business as a major product vs. ancillary, IBM must build quality software products with features that its customers need and want. The bad news is that whatever the System i community has become accustomed to paying and whatever it expects to receive in return, the amount to be paid is going up and the number of bundled products for the money is going down.  

IBM's documentation explains that better than I can in just a few short paragraphs. Again it all depends on what you are purchasing or upgrading. So, to help you know what the trip to i 6.1 will cost, for budgeting purposes, you might want to ask your friendly business partner to work that up for you.  While you are at it, you might want to get the price of some of the new gear out there, especially the new blade centers. You might be surprised.  

As you know, at 10:30 May 15, I had the pleasure of addressing the Northeast Pennsylvania Computer Users Group at the beautiful campus of Luzerne County Community College in Nanticoke with a presentation on the new IBM announcements from January forward to now.   The slides for all of the presentations and documentation that you may care to reference in the future are loaded up and you can get them at the following links: 

Introduction to the Announcement

New Hardware - Power 6 based

IBM i 6.1 Operating System

Text from George Farr Interview Regarding Compiler & Tool Changes 
 

To whet your appetite for more, some of the announcement material I used in my presentation follows: 
 

IBM i Operating System Runs On a Blade  

The IBM i Edition Express for BladeCenter® S offers an extremely attractive option for existing AS/400®, iSeries® and System i™ 515, 520 and 525 clients to reduce IT costs and complexity by consolidating their IBM i and Windows® applications with an IBM BladeCenter solution.  

With starting prices similar to the Power™ 520 Express i Edition, the i Edition Express for BladeCenter S enables you to run your i applications and consolidate x86 servers into the BladeCenter S chassis that supports up to six blades and over three terabytes of disk.  

And, with a 3-year warranty included, the lease price of the new solution could often be less than what you may be paying today. You can achieve even higher value by consolidating existing x86 servers (running Windows and/or Linux) onto x86 blades in the same BladeCenter chassis for centralized management, resource sharing, common leasing and 3-year warranty terms.  
 

From the SF Chronicle 

April 9 2008 -- IBM Corp. began shipping high-end computers Tuesday built around the fastest chip on Earth, a microprocessor that can carry out up to 5 billion instructions per second, surpassing the speediest competing processors built by rivals like Intel or Sun Microsystems. 

The new IBM processor, called the Power6, was designed to run big-ticket, water-cooled machines that drive corporations or tackle scientific problems, but slower versions of this same family of chips are already being used in inexpensive, consumer devices like the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation. 
 

Clay Rider, Sageeza Group Perspective: 

This is one announcement that we have been waiting to see for a long time, and we are elated that it has finally happened. While the continued gains in IBM's POWER6 processor are noteworthy, and its unique position in the marketplace as a highly flexible multi-OS 64-bit platform should not be underestimated, what captures our attention is the unification of the former System i and System p product families.  

To our way of thinking, this unification bodes very well for the UNIX community and hopefully will put to rest the ongoing angst of whether or not IBM truly supports and believes in the beloved System i. To be clear, in this announcement System i aficionados have much to be thankful and a lot to look forward to.  

The heritage of the System i is assured and its existing customer base's loyalty has been rewarded.  
 

Kelly Consulting Comments: 

With the merger of p and i comes an almost unified system, heading for full unification within the next year. Therefore many of the new terms and conditions that are similar for the i and p communities are not too familiar for the i community. System p hardware and methods is the basis for the new model set. The Microsoft software pricing model as used on System p is also the way software will be sold (per user). IBM has built a few i-only editions during the transition period in which the total price does not equal the sum of the parts so this is good news also.  

Sales personnel / business partners are now enabled to have one set of products to cover what once was two systems.  However, the way the i community purchases hardware and software is changing dramatically. Along with the phenomenal new capabilities of the Power6 and the BladeCenter come a number of new and perhaps unexpected complexities. Though once assembled, the once System i, now PowerSystem models are as integrated as your System i ever was, there is "some assembly required." And, you have to be careful because in an ala carte system, things that were once included may not be included. b   

Having been an IBM Systems Engineer and having conducted IBM announcement meetings inside IBM and since my retirement, I thought I knew what to expect in preparing for May 15.   IBM's information is always high quality but sometimes sketchy. Over the course of eight days and many more hours than a sane man would knowingly invest, I managed to gain a perspective well enough to present the material to the community. Along the way, I asked IBM more than 20 specific questions in as many as 15 emails, and other than the software group, IBM was most cooperative.  There is a lot in this announcement and the more you understand, the more effectively you will be able to plan for both the near and far future regarding your company's needs and for the box once known as the System i that will be forever more needy than you may be accustomed.    

For those unable to make the meeting today who are in the process of digesting the bullets on the many slides presented, if you would like Kelly Consulting to help you understand all this, feel free to send a note to This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it , and I would be happy to assist you. ** 

The best