System iNetwork

March 26, 2008

The Calm Before the COMMON Storm

The annual COMMON conference will kick off Sunday, and indubitably it's a great time of year for the System i world. IBM and its Business Partners will take advantage of the event to show off new solutions, vendors will announce their latest and greatest, and many attendees will get a boost of adrenaline in the form of education and inspiration. For now, though, the System i world is in the eye of a hurricane, and it's eerily calm . . . there are just a few minor news items, such as the Lawson Conference and User Exchange (CUE) event that took place last week to the tune of 5,000 attendees, which far eclipses COMMON these days . . . does anyone not believe it's an application-centric world?

V6R1 shipped out last Friday, and IBM will be able to show it off at the Expo at COMMON and talk about it in sessions. There has been a lot going on since the last COMMON, not the least of which is IBM's restructuring and a Town Hall Meeting that's shaping up to deliver even more game-changing news. Mark Shearer will no doubt talk about the "secret sauce" that is i5/OS, and the next generation of POWER6-based systems should deliver a powerful combination with V6R1.

Then there's RDi and RDi SOA and how the System i in-house development world will respond. I can see both renewed interest in IBM tooling as well as a renewed interest in third-party developer solutions as customers are able to see the cards IBM is holding and become more willing to bet on others. I think IBM's RDi announcements might be a catalyst for action in those organizations that have been playing a System i game of poker but have been consistently folding their hands, not willing to risk making a move.

How about a BladeCenter on the IBM Expo floor? Just seeing a new piece of hardware in person, in three dimensions, and the change of metaphor in how you approach IT with a BladeCenter might give a lot of attendees reason to pause and think to the future.

Will Mark Shearer talk about how IBM can vastly increase its sales with Windows and Linux through System i-based organizations that can utilize the BladeCenter to simplify and consolidate their other servers? Will Shearer ask COMMON attendees to take this idea home or will he just plant the seeds? Will IBM mask the cost of i5/OS on a blade by bundling it with an overall solution that's expensive to acquire but smart over the long haul? Or will i5/OS and related pricing actually drop?

Next week we'll learn many answers and find new questions, and we'll likely come home full of disappointment as well as excitement.

Posted by cmaxcer at March 26, 2008 8:38 AM