System iNetwork

May 2008

May 28, 2008 9:26 PM

COMMON Belgium Tips to Power, Is COMMON Next?

Now that IBM's System i group is part of the IBM Power Systems group, COMMON Belgium has wasted little time shifting its focus to be more inclusive of the latest related IBM technologies. The user group posted a letter on its website a few weeks ago noting, "We are pleased to announce that COMMON Belgium, the users association that used to profile itself strongly as a System i-user group, has decided to become the users association of medium-sized and small enterprises that are or want to become clients of IBM."

This means that the user group will cover different server types, storage, management, middleware, and applications whether or not they run on IBM i. So with COMMON Belgium shifting focus, are COMMON and COMMON Europe next?

To find out, I queried COMMON President Randy Dufault, asking if the topic had come up for discussion either formally or informally at COMMON, if COMMON was considering any sort of name change, and, moreover, what he -- as president -- was thinking on the matter.

"Any time IBM restructures itself or its products there certainly is an impact on the user community, and most certainly, an impact on the organized user group community. Over the course of the 48 years COMMON has been serving users of IBM midrange computing products, things have changed a bunch of times, and despite those changes, COMMON's core mission of providing advocacy, education and community for its members is as relevant today as it was nearly half a century ago. There hasn't been any discussion or consideration for changing the name," he noted.

"That said, the key question is, 'What defines a user of IBM midrange computing products?' It could easily be argued that the umbrella of Power Systems now encompasses much, if not most, of that community. IBM i is a huge part of the community and will continue to be. However, it seems right now that the other parts of the Power Systems community are not well represented by independent user groups, and I think COMMON has a lot to offer to them," he added.

Dufault noted that the COMMON Board of Directors is constantly looking at how it can best serve the COMMON membership.

"Though final plans are not in place, benefits and services that will address the needs of the broader Power Systems community -- benefits and services across all three pillars of COMMON -- will likely be a part of the organization's very near future. There should be little or no impact to COMMON's members who concentrate primarily on IBM i, just more opportunities if and when they have other needs beyond i in their Power Systems environment," he explained.

From my perspective, the idea that COMMON would naturally expand with IBM's shift isn't particularly surprising -- how it will play out in terms of education, identity, advocacy, and membership growth is certainly up in the air. Instead of juggling a few different kinds of balls, think of a guy trying to juggle a handful of COMMON attendee badges. It's gonna be a tough job.

Dufault also said that the IBM reorganization generated quite a bit of discussion during the recent COMMON Europe board meeting and that he expects that the individual user groups in countries in Europe will likely develop their own strategies -- like COMMON Belgium did.

"Ultimately I suspect all of COMMON's sister organizations around the world will look to serve the broader Power Systems community," he said. "The next few years should be great fun as we learn from each other what the best ways are to serve our members."

Posted by cmaxcer on May 28, 2008 at 9:26 PM | Comments (1)

May 27, 2008 9:50 AM

Making Management Understand the Value of System i

COMMON Europe's Top Concerns 2008 survey has revealed the latest Golden Concern: making management understand the value of System i. A Golden Concern is basically a free-text spot on the survey where respondents can enter any key concerns that weren't listed as pre-populated choices. COMMON Europe just wrapped up its annual Congress 2008 event in Barcelona and released the survey data.

For other top issues, the survey showed that "improve IT security and continuity" and "satisfy internal customers" are the topmost concerns for worldwide System i users. For the first time this year, COMMON Europe extended its multilingual survey for global participation, and 370 people responded from all corners of the globe.

The top concerns were followed by "do fast application development to fulfill business needs," "keep the skills current for the existing staff," and "treat data security and confidentiality as business risks." Surprisingly, COMMON Europe noted, "Virtualise servers" and "Reply with efficacy to ever growing storage needs" came in at 13 and 15 in a list of 15.

The second-most-cited Golden Concern, by the way, was "native graphical user interface (or modernize application)."

IBM's Power Systems Announcements (and Customer Plans)

Customer responses to the recent IBM announcement were:

• Migrate in 2008 to IBM i 6.1: 43% yes, 37% no, 20% unspecified
• Migrate in 2008 to Power 6 processors: 23% yes, 55% no, 22% unspecified
• Migrate in 2008 to Blades with IBM i 6.1: 6% yes, 69% no, 25% unspecified

COMMON Europe uses the Top Concerns survey to understand its member priorities and to influence IBM and its Business Partners.

"IBM looks forward to the feedback from the i community through Top Concerns and especially the requirements from the COMMON Europe and Americas customer advisory councils that help shape our future products," noted Mark Shearer, vice president of marketing for IBM Business Systems, in his keynote speech at the COMMON Europe Congress in Barcelona.

"Feedback from previous surveys has strongly influenced our IBM strategy for the new Power Systems platform," he added.

Posted by cmaxcer on May 27, 2008 at 9:50 AM | Comments (4)

May 14, 2008 11:21 AM

IBM's Eric Hess Covers PowerHA for i and More

I recently did a Q&A podcast, "IBM i High Availability and Disaster Recovery for 2008", with Eric Hess, who is an IBM executive IT specialist for IBM Power Systems. He's only got 27 years of IBM experience in all aspects of availability and storage for the AS/400, iSeries, System i and IBM i, but hey, we won't hold that against him.

In the podcast, Hess covers IBM's availability strategy for the IBM i community, what's new in 2008 for IBM i availability, PowerHA for i, and common mistakes made by organizations, and tops it all off with some advice for moving forward with high-availability and disaster-recovery solutions.

While we're on the subject, IBM has a new HA/DR site for IBM Power Systems that you might want to bookmark: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/software/availability/i5os.html

Posted by cmaxcer on May 14, 2008 at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2008 8:10 AM

Zeitler: i Environment Positioned for Longevity and Innovation

Bill Zeitler, one of IBM's most influential leaders, is retiring this summer. Zeitler joined IBM in 1969 as a programmer and zoomed up through IBM's ranks, having a hand in the launch of the AS/400 and ultimately leading the group as the general manager of the AS/400 Division in the late 1990s. He went on to become senior vice president and group executive of the IBM Systems and Technology Group -- the position he now holds.

System iNetwork caught up with a busy Zeitler and managed to snag a couple of quick comments from him:

CM: I heard that the unification of System p and System i was something that you've been working on for a long time. Now that the unification job is complete, does retiring now, following the launch of Power Systems, seem especially fitting?

Zeitler: As you know, we've been moving toward the unification of System i and p hardware for some time. We have been sharing more and more technology with the ultimate objective to enable clients to leverage these powerful operating systems on one hardware platform -- racks, blades and scalable systems -- with industry-leading performance and virtualization. Given my background with System i and the community going back to the launch of the AS/400, it's incredibly satisfying for me to see this through to completion. There is no question in my mind that the i environment is well positioned for longevity and future innovation. The feedback from the community has been extremely positive, so it's clear we've done the right thing by our customers.

CM: What's Next for Bill Zeitler?

Zeitler: I will be turning over the leadership of the Systems and Technology Group to Bob Moffat on July 1. I will help Bob with the transition until August 1 and retire at that point. I have been with IBM for 39 years, and it has been a very gratifying experience. I plan to spend time relaxing and sailing with my wife and family.

Posted by cmaxcer on May 13, 2008 at 8:10 AM | Comments (1)

May 12, 2008 7:11 AM

IBM Gets Nimble With New Tape Drive

IBM usually churns out one product after another in a fairly predictable fashion, following the conventions its customers have come to expect all these years. However, in a rapid response to customer demand, later this month IBM will ship a new tape drive ahead of schedule -- so much so that a formal IBM announcement letter describing the offering isn't even available yet. The solution? New support for a high-speed LTO Ultrium 4 SAS tape drive for the Power 520 and Power 550 systems. Previously, IBM only offered support for a 4mm DAT tape drive.

Kurt Rump, from IBM's Executive Briefing Center in Rochester, Minnesota, contacted me with the information. Here's the background from Kurt, as well as the details:

Background:

Recently, in the interest of getting a new capability into the marketplace faster, IBM circumvented the normal announcement letter process, so there will be no formal announcement letter to reference. Meanwhile, we still want the i community to be aware of this new capability.

When we announced the Power 520 and Power 550 in April, the system units provided space for one half-high media bay for an SAS tape drive. However, the only tape drive available to mount in that space was a 4mm DAT drive. The product team got a lot of feedback on that because so many customers are using other technologies such as LTO or QIC (Quarter Inch Cartridge) drives. In response, the team accelerated the development of a SAS LTO Ultrium 4 drive that could be mounted in the same space, resulting in a higher speed, higher capacity, and more compatible offering. The drive is announced with a planned availability of May 30, 2008.

Details:

Support for a high-capacity, high-speed LTO Ultrium 4 SAS tape drive has been announced for the Power 520 (9407-M15, 9408-M25) and the Power 550 (9409-M50) systems. This drive mounts into the embedded half-high bay in the system unit. Previously, only a 4mm DAT tape drive was available for this bay. General availability of the LTO Ultrium 4 drive (hereafter referred to as LTO-4) is planned for May 30, 2008.

The capacity of an LTO-4 tape cartridge is 800 GB uncompressed or 1.6 TB with typical 2x compression. The rated native data transfer of the tape drive is up to 120MB/sec. The drive is compatible with LTO-4 (Read/Write), LTO-3 (Read/Write), and LTO-2 (Read) media. It is priced very attractively compared to the 200 GB LTO-2 SCSI tape drive, which is available in the POWER5 515, 520, and 525 system units, while offering up to 4x the capacity and up to 5x the transfer rate of that tape drive. Performance and capacity compare even more favorably to the 36 GB DAT 4mm tape, previously the only SAS tape option available for the embedded tape bay in these new POWER6 systems. The LTO-4 SAS tape drive is ordered as feature #5746 and is placed in the half-high tape bay/slot of the system unit.

There is also an optional #5747 feature that ships five LTO-4 tape cartridges for customer convenience.

The LTO-4 tape drive will require PTFs to be loaded on the system for either IBM i 5.4 or 6.1. IBM plans to have the PTFs available by May 30.

Required PTFs for the tape drive:

• V5R4M5 = MF44592
  
• V6R1 = MF44593
  

Optional, but highly recommended:

• V5R4M5 = MF44542 and MF44543
  
• V6R1 = MF44640 and MF44641
  

This tape drive can either be shipped with a new system or ordered as an MES for installation in an existing Power 520 or Power 550. It is a customer set-up (CSU) feature.

The prerequisites for this tape drive are

1. an empty tape drive bay/slot in the Power 520/550 system unit
   
2. a #3655 half-high SAS cable which goes inside the system unit
   
3. required PTFs
   

In an effort to be responsive to feedback from the i community, IBM made some significant schedule improvements to bring this tape drive to market ahead of plan; however, due to the accelerated schedule, there is no formal announcement letter for this product enhancement.

Overall

IBM's Rump noted that although the new LTO Ultrium 4 SAS tape-drive option has been fast tracked, there is enough information available at IBM to get it configured, priced, ordered, and installed.

Posted by cmaxcer on May 12, 2008 at 7:11 AM | Comments (1)

May 7, 2008 8:17 AM

Revisiting the New Power Names

Ian Jarman, who is now the manager of Power Systems Software for IBM, was reading Maxed Out and noticed my disdain over the "i for Business" phrase, as well as my softer, more positive side on the new Power-related logos. So in a proactive move, he set up a conference call to go over the latest IBM naming conventions, which I'll share here, because, hey, these name changes are confusing. Besides, I've got some really great news.

In referring to what was formerly known as i5/OS, IBM i is the official product name, and that's a deliberate pairing of both terms -- IBM and i -- so that it will show up well in Web searches. In its own publications, IBM will typically use IBM i at least on the first reference, thought it's also possible to use i separately when referring to the operating system or the OS-related world, like i applications, i community, i solutions, or i running on a 520.

As for specific releases, that's IBM i 6.1, i 6.1, i 5.4, or even just 6.1.

"One thing that we never use is 'i for Business'," Jarman noted. "That's just in the logo."

So, thankfully, "i for Business" is not part of the official name, and in fact, it has more to do with trademark issues in the logos than it does with promoting the heritage of i5/OS. It turns out that "i" is quite popular as a trademark element, as is "i" inside of a circle for logo usage. IBM had to find a way to create a logo that wouldn't infringe on other logos, and including "for Business" helped. Plus, that little underline slash graphic . . . same deal.

The unintended side effect of the tweaked logo is actually good for the i world -- it distinguishes i from AIX and Linux, properly positions the OS as an operating system for business, and it creates a logo that's harder to glance over or ignore.

"The whole purpose [of the logos] is to bring together the marketing and branding of our software under Power Systems Software, and that's going very well because we want to raise the profile of all this, and in particular, raise the profile of PowerVM because that's a new brand -- and better position the operating systems as a group that run on Power Systems," Jarman explained.

PowerVM, by the way, is the new brand for the logical partitioning that System i customers have been using since 1999 -- so the underlying core of it isn't new to the System i world. More importantly, PowerVM is the special mojo that makes the Power System so flexibly strong.

Posted by cmaxcer on May 7, 2008 at 8:17 AM | Comments (8)

May 5, 2008 8:57 AM

What's Your Top Concerns?

COMMON Europe, the sister organization of COMMON in North America, has opened up its annual Top Concerns survey to everyone on the web. COMMON Europe uses the responses of its survey to determine what's most important to IBM's midrange customers so it can influence IBM and its business partners to better serve the needs of the midrange world. As you might expect, the survey also asks whether you plan to migrate to IBM i 6.1 in 2008, migrate to a new POWER6-based system, or migrate to a BladeCenter running IBM i 6.1 in 2008.

Plus, there's 15 concerns that participants can rank by importance, such as improving IT security and continuity, virtualize servers, and doing fast application development to fulfill business needs.

If you've got a concern unaddressed by the 15 provided, COMMON Europe is also providing a blank text field for a "golden concern" of your own.

The closing date for the multi-lingual Web-based Top Concerns Survey is end-of-day Friday, May 9; however, COMMON Europe will also do an on-the-spot survey during the opening session of the annual COMMON Europe Congress on May 18 in Barcelona. Survey respondents have a chance to win one of six Apple iPod nanos.

Last year's hot topics of concern were all about business continuity, HA, and disaster recovery.

After filling out the COMMON Europe survey, feel free to return to this post and share your own "golden concern" as a comment!

Posted by cmaxcer on May 5, 2008 at 8:57 AM | Comments (3)