System i Addict

Big news in the IBM i market. Help/Systems acquires PowerTech.

Link to News on The Four Hundred

I have someone in my list of people I trust asking me if I know anyone in or around Denver or Salt Lake that is looking for a Job being a Senior System i Admin for a Bank in the Rocky Mountains, they run JackHenry’s software and you are going to need to move to the Colorado.

Oh and one last thing, they are a Lotus Notes shop so if you read this blog and are a fan of Lotus then I think you will be happy, you will have to convince them to run it on IBM i but knowing how stable the IBM i is you can help them out, they run Lotus Domino on Windows right now…

If you want to be considered I have the inside track to the IT team, send me your resume and I will forward it on and get you some exposure.

-David

david dot vasta at gmail dot com

It was almost 20 years ago when I got into IT, and my first desktop PC was an IBM AS/400 e90…I think it cost $3 Million. I of course was sharing it with 700 other users, but what a great beast!

I just wanted to wish the IBM i (AS/400) a very Happy Birthday, next year we can all go out drinking!

Link to Chris Maxcer’s Blog about the Birthday and IBM

-Oh I was not invited to the events in Rochester this week and to say I am hurt is an understatment. From the leading IBM i Blogger on the web to, some goofball at in Charlotte writting about technology. It’s a long fall!

There is a PDF of the timeline

Link to Article

“This announcement puts IBM under severe pressure. Lotus maven, Ed Brill is valiantly defending the line, but with the iPhone now becoming a legitimate Enterprise device some of the bastions of Notes will come under pressure from senior Executives to deliver an ‘integrated’ messaging solution.”

I have a standard updated as of today version of Ubuntu 8.04 running on a DELL Optiplex 755. It’s a pretty good little second machine. I have installed the Lotus Notes client on the Ubuntu desktop and have take a few screen shots to share with all of you.

As for the install, it’s easy and that is how you do software. There are a few things out of place in the client but all seems to be working. Still tinkering but I wanted to get these posted.

Installing from DEBs that came right from IBM. I didn’t have to make them!

Part of the Wizard

Lotus Notes Wizard looking for the ID file

Lotus 8.5 DB properties. Sorry for the black outs. Had to for my purposes.

FIle Menu

Lotus 8.5 Open Menu

Lotus 8.5 displaying an Image and it worked first time. No problems there.

A little image of what you get when you download the TAR files from IBM. Hope that all makes sense. Looks like a football play?

Side Notes: I am excited as to the future of Lotus Notes. I really am. A Linux/Ubuntu install and the new Mac client is well and good, but when am I going to be able to trash my Windows desktop as an Administrator or a Designer? How far out is that? I know I can use the Web Administration but that creates overhead on my servers and if one of them is down it spoils the works. I really want IBM to build a Lotus Administration Client for Linux and if you are felling cheeky a MacOSX version too. I would also like to see a clear path to Eclipse and how that is coming. IMHO it should have been out years ago, but again it’s not here and we are all kind of stuck in the middle again with Notes 8.5 for Linux and for Mac but no way to build new applications or administer them. If Microsoft wants to take pot shots at you this is the way they are going to do it. Point out that Lotus is only delivering some of the tools on some of the OSes and playing favorites. It may be FUD but it’s what they have to work with.

Lotus needs to step it up and stop playing delivery man all the time and just give me what I have been requesting going on five or nine years now. I want my Administration Client and my Designer Client on Mac and Linux (Ubuntu) and I want it now. I don’t want crying about numbers or statistics, I just want it delivered and I expect it from a company as large as IBM who cries all the time about how poor Windows is and then forces it’s customer base to keep using it. You can’t have it both ways.

So I got my session evals from COMMON. I didn’t do all that bad, but one comment made me laugh and sad. First it was my first year giving everything but, Do You Ubuntu? So all this material is stuff I know just need to work on the delivery, hey cut me some slack!

This comment was from my Shell Scripting Session:

“This session was a waste of time. The instructor is an embarrassment to IBM!”

My Comments: I didn’t that I did so bad I embarrassed IBM, good lord, do you think they know I am an embarrassment. The joke here is I don’t work for IBM and the last time I was even remotely connected to the was when I was a contractor in 1998. While I have been an embarrassment to many people in my life I didn’t know I stunk so bad as to offend a company that has nothing to do with me, and for that matter I am probably an embarrassment to Blogging too….

Thanks for the comments. Shell Scripting while important is not my best session, yet it got one of the nastiest comments and some of the better scores, hell the session I thought I knocked out of the park got crappy reviews. The Bloggers session was “average”. Lordy lordy we are in trouble.

I also got some other more useful and correct comments like:

“David is a great speaker and knowledgeable. “ - WOW thanks!
“Very simple and well shown - thanks! ” - That is nice
“Was very good. Was late and seemed a bit unprepared. Could be a great presenter. “ - In my defense I could not find the room? But at least I could be great!
“Found out about Web min - good tool!” - Webmin Rocks!
“We could have used more time, great handout.” - I miss being with you too!

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.

Trevor got me thinking about System i Addict and how it is very narrow and locks me into doing mostly i stuff, and I want to be more inclusive and I want to make sure we can all be addicts. I want POWER Addicts!

So I thunk and thunk and came up with Addict Army. Addict Navy didn’t sound right. I want to build a place to hang out and learn.

So what is Addict Army? It’s going to be a place that when done all of the POWER Addicts can hang out and have a love fest for everything POWER. I think it’s a step in the right direction and I will continue to blog on all things Addict.

We are going to have shirts, and other stuff you can buy to show your addict colors. I am going to take that money and put it all right back into the web site & other things. I have big dreams that this will all be something I can always give back to you the Addict Army. Experts in the industry blogging in their own blogs and trying to get more information and stuff for all of us. I am excited and it’s late so I will wrap it up.

Link to David’s Post

Thanks, David for all you do.

Nothing says you are moving forward like talking about VM. And no one not even Sun can hold a candle to what IBM can do in the virtualization space much less tell anyone they have a better product. I know that for fact.

IBM’s partitioning is tested and true and was on the Mainframe S/390 long before it every saw the light of day on any Sun platform. HPUX isn’t even in the same zip code right now either.

VMWare is a player in the market and while VMware is doing neat things, IBM beat them to the punch long ago when you could partition up a single pSeries or iSeries server into many server without much thought, only no one was calling it VM at the time.

Now with the platform, POWER, VM on Power is real and well over 10 years old not to mention all the years before that on the S/390 and before. IBM this week really put things into high gear with PowerVM and the logo is spiffy too.

IBM hs also released a new logo for AIX on Power and like Linux I wanted to make sure you saw it as well. It’s just impressive.

LINK to AIX on POWER @ IBM

There are a new set of logos with a new set up web sites. I want to make sure you get an image and a Link to the new places.

LINK to Linux on POWER @ IBM

I don’t get to talk to Scott as much as I would like but I get to hear about Scott plenty. He is one of the nicest people I know. He is alwasy wiling to help and he comes to COMMON for the people. He is here to help. Chris Maxcer got a chance to talk with him and this is what Scott said.

Thanks Scott for what you do. You a very kind person to give as much as you do. The community moves forward because you share what you know.

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.

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.

IBM also released what has to be some of the best looking logos to date and I will post them all soon.
Thanks IBM for a great COMMON!

Sorry Ken no Video Card, but I can tell you this is way better!

Maxed Out - Please head over and read what Chris has written. He puts it all in such wonderful words.

I found my new friends at COMMON this year!

I have been wearing my kilt at COMMON every year since San Antonio which I think was 2004 sometime. I love wearing my kilt and at this COMMON there is a booth or company that has decided to sport a kilt or two, or even four.

ARCAD Software 

While on the COMMON floor I was able to look at the new System i Power Blades that IBM is saying will fit in your current “H” & “S” blade centers. It’s a four core Power6 blade that you can use any number of ways. It’s important to me because now I have my “pizza box” and they are also talking about a 2 core blade on the way that will of course be much like a System i 515 or 520 depending on how you use it.

As a Lotus person now I get excited about the oddest things. I would love to get about 3 new 4 core bladed and run a few Domino servers on them on System i and System p? Wouldn’t that be fun?

Not sure if anyone has covered this topic but IBM has released a set of docs that show how good the performace is in Lotus Domino 8.0.1

Link —-> The case for upgrading to IBM Lotus Domino 8 for better server performance

I have some buddies up in Mass. and wanted to make sure the folks from Lotus in the Boston area know we all like 8.0.1, it’s Wicked Nice!

I have been using it for the past 24 hours and I can tell you now, this is what we all have been complaining asking for in this version of Lotus 8. Lots of the features we wanted back are there. I am really impressed with it and have shown it to a few end users and they want it NOW!

So way to go IBM and LOTUS, it’s a job well done. Now all we have to do as Lotus people is leverage it properly and everything in the universe will be perfect, at least until we find a bug.

Link to my post on my ITKE site. LINK

I try not to get to “big headed” about my status in the System i community and other technical things. I have always had a profound respect for favorite my aussie blogger, Mr. Trevor Perry, and I have know him to sound a little like Angus the IT Chap at times as well.I just found out that I will be presenting at COMMON this year with Trevor,and oh what and honor that will be. I think Trevor is the reason I started all of this.There are many other fine bloggers that I hope we can have there as well and pay them some respect too. I would love to see everyone who attends COMMON show up and give us feedback, but I am not sure how that will happen without giving away a new System i Express to each of them.