System i Addict

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

Link to News on The Four Hundred

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.

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.

IT Jungle has the post. It’s a very god read. Hope to get more details on this so we can all understand it.

Without getting too technical, here’s what happens on the OS/400 and i5/OS platform when you create applications, which explains the problem customers ran into in 1995 and which IBM wants them to avoid in 2008. A programmer writes an application in say, RPG. They run it through a compiler, either using the Original Program Model (OPM) or the Integrated Language Environment (ILE) compilers, and the code compiles so they can run it. Or, rather, that is what it looks like to the programmer. What is really happening is that this application is compiled into an intermediate stage, which some IBMers have called RPG templates (in the case of RPG applications). These templates have a property called observability, which in essence means they are compiled to the TIMI layer. These intermediate templates are then used by the TIMI layer on an actual piece of hardware with a specific processor and instruction set to compile the application to run on that specific processor. TIMI compiles these RPG templates down to actual compiled code behind the scenes the first time an application runs, and because the code was originally compiled to the TIMI layer, there is no need to change the source code. Only the object code changes, which end users never had access to anyway because only TIMI can reach down there. This is the brilliant way that IBM has preserved customers’ vast investments in RPG, COBOL, and other applications over the years.

The entire story here… 

Getting Ready for V6R1 Redbook 

I have always wanted an Intel PC that could run i5OS. While I do understand the ramifications of that wish because of the way i5OS is engineered for the Power5 system it still would be cool to had out Openi5 CDs to all the other people who don’t know what it is and to the Solaris people who swear by that hodge podge of an OS. I love UNIX but it is so confusing for the average user.

LINK to POST

Is this another Name Change or just a fix in how we look at the System i and System p?

LINK TO POST

IBM Corp. is splitting up its midrange System i server division between high- and low-end models.The more powerful horses such as IBM’s System i5 570 and System i5 595 will be combined with IBM’s Unix servers (or System p) and will be called the Power Systems unit. Meanwhile, the smaller boxes will become part of a division of their own that focuses on the small and medium-sized business (SMB) market and will be called the Business Systems unit.

So now it is all starting to make no sense and at the same time it’s all so clear now to me.

IBM has purchased DataMirror!

Read the Post on IT Jungle Here

Private equity firm Thoma Cressey Bravo has been driving a wave of consolidation in the market for high availability and data replication software in the i5/OS and OS/400 server market since last fall, having acquired three of the four biggest players and merging them under Vision Solutions. In a surprising move yesterday, IBM, which has always been a strong partner with the makers of HA software for its proprietary server line, acquired the fourth big player in this market, DataMirror, for $161 million.

I would like to think I had something to do with this. I think a lot of myself, I really do. I pulled aside every IBM’er I could get my hands on and mentioned that I thought the 40 user cap was a shoot yourself in the foot move and would be used against them by the likes of DELL and SUN. I will spare you the exact quote from the Sun rep but they all had that comment in their hip pocket before IBM had a chance to explain it away.

I think this was a very smart move on IBM’s part and puts that server in contention to play with the big boys as a little guy price. Everyone now has no excuse to not get on the System i!

I could see 515s or 525s in a JDE environment doing the work of Logic Servers. That would work out really good for me.

LINK to System i News Post 

LINK to Story about Seagull Software

I like keeping track of Seagull, they have some neat technology.

London - 14 June 2007 - Seagull Software (AEX: SEAGULL), a provider of high-performance solutions that transform legacy business applications into service-oriented architecture (SOA) assets, is to sponsor and exhibit. Seagull Software will showcase its industry LegaSuite® solution during the exhibition, which enables organisations across all sectors to reduce the time, cost and risk of SOA migration and achieve real business process transformation. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s hard to believe that 25 years have elapsed since David Duke launched NEWS 34/38 magazine in 1982. At that time I had just migrated from a state-of-the-art System/3 programming shop to the tiny new world of the System/34. I had also worked on the first beta System/38 machine at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, a stone’s throw from Rochester, my hometown. Since then, the way we administer, secure, and interconnect our systems has changed in ways I could never have imagined.

Link to post and other stuff

Link to Post here about the 515 and 525 Systems

We’ve received a range of feedback about IBM’s recent 515 and 525 entry-level System i announcements. Many of the comments have been quick and to the point, both positive and negative, including the shortest response so far, which was simply “Still too expensive.” Other readers have vacillated from elation to dismay. . . . Clearly there are a few areas we’ll want to follow up on, including what these announcements might mean for existing customers. Look for more tomorrow. In meantime, here’s a first shot of feedback:

Read the rest of this entry »

BM Announces WDSc 7.0 with New Lean and Mean Install

by Chris Maxcer , News Editor

February 27, 2007 -Bucking the trend of releasing development tools that require increasing levels of memory and high-end PC processors to simply run, IBM has finally offered the PDM and SEU killer version of WebSphere Developer Studio Client (WDSc) for the System i.

“With this release, everyone using PDM and SEU should start using WDSc version 7,” says Kou-Mei Lui, IBM’s marketing manager for WDSc and System i development tools.

The key reason, IBM says, is that you can selectively install a lean and mean version that can run on only 256 MB of memory. IBM previewed a rudimentary version of this feature early last year at COMMON in Minneapolis, calling it WDSc Lite. Attendees at that event indicated a lot of interest in using the lightweight WDSc, leading IBM to an even better version now.

Link to the entire story @ iSeriesNews 

From System i News: In yet another acquisition coming to the System i world in recent months, Rocket Software has taken the first step toward acquiring Seagull Software. Both companies announced yesterday that they have signed a letter of intent for Rocket to make a public offer to acquire 100 percent of the shares and outstanding stock options of Seagull Holding N.V., the parent company of all Seagull Software entities.

As some of you may already know I worked for Seagull Software at one time a few years back and know a few of the people still there. They have done wonders with thier offering over the past 5 years to make it pretty solid. I am curious as to how this is all going to shake out when it’s over.

I have been reading the Rocket Software web site and you taking about a confusing line-up of products. I thought Seagull’s offering a few years back was hard to understand those guys are all over the map. Maybe Kim Addington can give them a little of her magic and clean that up and make it readable.

Good luck to all Ya’ll at Seagull Software. This will be interesting to see what happens.

Press Release from Rocket

Press Release from Seagull Software 

I love what Seagull has done with the web site and the catchy little lights on the Seagull Logo, which I think is one of the best logos around. It’s simple, it’s blue and it’s easy to recognize. I sure hope they can help Rocket with their marketing.

So all you iSeries Fans out there are always asking…..Where are the iSeries commercials?

Right here. I hope you download these and share them please. They are pretty funny. We all know why…….gives those windows admins hell! Server for each thingie…man that is funny!

Watch Them in Order or you will not get the full effect.

Commercial 1 - “Covered”

Commercial 2 - “Automatic”

Commercial 3 - “The People”

Enjoy!

As some of you may know there are three big players in HA and Fail Over Software. Lakeview, Vision, and iTera (oh Data Mirror too but I know very little about them and their solution.) and in the past few weeks Vision and iTera were quietly became one company.

I have been a VISION customer, I have been a Lakeview customer, and I am an iTera customer now. I could give you reasons to love and not love each of them, but the ideas that VISION and iTera are now apart of the same company scares the you know what out of me. I think iTera has a good product. it’s light and runs well, I think Vision has a very large and bloated product and they think the world of it hence the large price tag.

So you take the worst of both world. Vision starts to think the world of iTera’s nice little product and boom, Nice product becomes really expensive over night. This combined with iTera being a little lite in other spots too and Vision being so big they can’t manage certain parts of their business very well and you have a perfect storm for Lakeview to pick up a good many frustrated customers. Who knows maybe even me?

I am going to watch this all unfold and if either side starts to show signs of the perfect storm, you can bet I am on the phone with my Lakeview rep.

Link to System iNetwork Article here.

FOLLOW UP: I just got back from Salt Lake City spending a wonderful week with the iTera team in training. They have a reallly decent product. I think they have some infastructure issues, but they admit to that openly, but Dan the former owner is a wonderful person, they all seem very up about the new company and the inside scoop is the new Vision product is going to be th iTera Echo2 product. So I would guess that the Vision OMS/400 and ODS/400 is dead, thank god, and the new offering is the Echo2 product which I might add is very solid. It has some issues with it but most of them are annoying little consistency issues not big life fail over issues. They will get that fixed soon enought I woudl think.

Some of the issues:

1. Consistancy of the options and F-keys with the IBm standard. IBM uses the “4″ to delete and object and iTera uses it to add or edit. Come on guys. “4″ is to delete and that is all. f12 is to cancel. f3 is to exit and so on. Fix the bloody screens so that it is consistant with the iSeries base OS.

2. Make all the options and f-keys the same on every screen.

3. Put the menu option like 1.1 on the top of the screen when you are in it so that you knwo what option you are in please.

4. I find it odd that Rick the trainer had loads, and I mean loads of great ideas to make the product better and no one at the company has listened to him. It really did make me think twice about a company that would not listen to the ideas of one of it’s own employees in order to improve the product. In my opinion Rick has really smart and insightful ideas about how to make the product more usable and less clunky and yet none of them he said were on the slate to get put in the product. If you not going to listen to one of your own fine and talented employees then why would you ever listen to me the customer?

That is all. iTera can call me if they want me to go over any more if this and thanks again for the great week in Salt Lake City, it’s a very beautiful city and the lights downtown were incredible.