System iNetwork

October 2008

October 29, 2008 11:08 PM

Perspectives: RPG Compilers Chief Architect Barbara Morris Featured in Special Podcast

Just in case anyone missed this in NEWS Daily today. . . .

We have a special NEWS Daily podcast brought to you by System i Developer and System iNetwork. Susan Gantner caught up with Barbara Morris, the chief architect of RPG compilers at IBM, at the RPG & DB2 Summit in Las Vegas last week. Morris and her team design and implement all enhancements to RPG, giving her a unique perspective on the language. In her conversatin with Gantner, she shares some of her insight and views on the future of RPG. *Listen now...

Posted by cmaxcer on October 29, 2008 at 11:08 PM | Comments (0)

October 27, 2008 8:38 AM

Hardware Sharing on the Rise with Power Systems

One of the interesting items to come out of IBM's Power Systems announcements was that 64 percent of Power Systems shipped with PowerVM in the second quarter of 2008--this would include both IBM i, AIX, and Linux. I asked Ian Jarman, IBM's Manager of Power Systems Software, to elaborate on what IBM is seeing with PowerVM these days.

Ian:

But if you dig a little bit deeper, it turns out that, partly because we've had logical partitioning since 1999 and micro partitioning since 2001, actually the adoption rates for i clients, particularly in the midrange and high end, has historically been higher than for our AIX and Linux clients. We're excited that we have one product, PowerVM, for virtualization, and this is really taking off in both markets, but for i customers this has been very much part of the consolidation and optimization activity they've been doing during the past eight years--it's very strongly adopted already.

Also on that front, we had a lot of i clients consolidating multiple operating systems on a single server, so we have people running i and Linux, or i and AIX, and that shared infrastructure concept we believe is part of the future of the platform, and it's particularly attractive today given that we have the same hardware prices underneath, the same hardware structure underneath, it has just made that shared infrastructure management and IT optimization a real option for many of our customers in the data center.

Chris:

"Previously, before the unification, what I kept hearing was that when it really came down to it, it wasn't always cost effective to put AIX and i on the same box--sometimes it was cheaper to buy two boxes and do it separately. . . ."

Ian:

That was often the case--but that's not to say we didn't have customers doing it, because we have many people doing it. In certain cases it was cheaper from a hardware point of view to do it separately. Another factor is, quite often in a data center there have been different groups managing Unix and managing i, so that was another factor for sure. Regardless of that, we have many customers who said, 'Actually I'm really running an i system--a System i in those days--it just makes sense from a management point of view to brings these systems together.'

The most typical example of doing that was an i customer using DB2 with an application stack like Oracle J.D. Edwards and then saying, 'I'd like to run Oracle financials or Oracle database or one of the other Oracle applications they might have, like Siebel, which runs in AIX'. So in certain industries and with certain applications, particularly in the Oracle marketplace, there has been quite a compelling reason to run on the same system.

I was just at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco, and they had an Oracle JD Edwards user group meeting there, and if you look at the shared infrastructure strategy that we have on Power, of running i and AIX on the same system, that's exactly the strategy that Oracle has . . . of offering different applications running in different operating environments--but are integrated together.

I think there's a very strong interest out there from customers who understand that going forward, there are multiple choices, whether it's Windows and i or AIX and i--there may not just be one answer to all the applications you need.

Posted by cmaxcer on October 27, 2008 at 8:38 AM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2008 9:22 AM

Did IBM i Take One for the p Team?

In the face of general economic distress in the United States, IBM's overall financial performance for the third quarter of 2008 was surprisingly solid. IBM reported total revenue of $25.3 billion, up 5 percent as reported, or 2 percent at constant currency. IBM's CFO Mark Loughridge, in his message to Wall Street last week, attributed IBM's solid overall performance to the company's distributed balance of solutions and services, delivered worldwide. Digging down into the Systems and Technology segment, however, reveals rocky ground: $4.4 billion in revenue, a total decrease of 10 percent.

Although System z mainframe server products increased 25 percent compared with the year-ago period--with a 49 percent overall increase in MIPS computing power--other hardware lines didn't fair as well. Revenues from the System x server line decreased 18 percent, while revenue from System Storage decreased 3 percent. And what of the System i, System p, and "converged" System p?

"Converged System p was up 7 percent, reflecting strong demand for IBM's virtualization technology and energy-saving capabilities," Loughridge reported.

"This is the ninth consecutive quarter of revenue growth, again gaining share and extending its market leadership position. High-end servers were up 19 percent year to year, and midrange servers were up 21 percent," he explained, noting, "legacy System i revenue declined about 80 percent year to year as we continued to transition our customer base to the converged POWER platform. This is a very small piece of our portfolio reflecting prior generation technology."

Taking It on the Chin

Loughridge's comments seem to reveal some interesting behind-the-scenes decision-making from IBM. The company has stated several times that it's reporting the new Power Systems revenue as "converged System p" because that's the best way it can report it within its own reporting structure. This seems odd, given that so many companies are in the business of evolving products and creating new ones--surely companies that create bold new server lines such as Power Systems aren't legally hampered from calling them Power Systems?

No, the problem arises in that IBM apparently wants to lump everything it can in to a "System p" bag so that it can brag that its System p line has had nine consecutive quarters of revenue growth, "again gaining share and extending its market leadership position."

What does this really mean? It means that if IBM reported System p revenue exactly as it did System i revenue, then System p revenue would likely have not shown revenue growth this quarter.

Here's the equation as IBM wants it reported:

Old System p + Power Systems with AIX + Power Systems with IBM i = Converged System p

What it should be is:

Old System p = Legacy System p

Old System i = Legacy System i

New Power Systems = New Power Systems

IBM is playing a marketing game with System p, and it's doing it so that it can say it's the Unix market leader, etc, etc. And that's fine. Unix is a competitive space. But we know the truth:

IBM i is taking it on the chin so that System p can shine a little brighter against the likes of HP and Sun.

Posted by cmaxcer on October 20, 2008 at 9:22 AM | Comments (4)

October 15, 2008 10:26 AM

Feeling Good About i--But the p Will Get the Report Tomorrow

When IBM announces its official third quarter 2008 financial report tomorrow, IBM i aficionados should be prepared: if IBM breaks out "System i" again this quarter, it's not going to be pretty. The deal is, IBM will report the new Power Systems, which include all the new i Editions that ship with IBM i, under the converged/unified "System p" tag that IBM is using for its financial news. It turns out that the most capable software and hardware solution provider in the world--IBM--seems to be saddled with some sort of issue with reporting its Power Systems lineup under the System p brand. I call bull. I simply can't believe--or perhaps refuse to accept--that a multi-national, multi-billion dollar company can't rename its server lines to Power Systems and report them as Power Systems. No, I believe IBM wants to report under System p because it makes it just a little easier to show growth in its Unix-competitive brand.

The inaccuracy of it all seems silly and mildly irritating to me, but I must admit that I'm also not IBM's CFO, nor do I have a three or two-letter acronym title for my job.

After the official announcement presentation to journalists last week, Scott Handy, vice president of worldwide marketing and strategy for IBM Power Systems, addressed a question about IBM's plans for reporting Power Systems revenue related to IBM i. Here's his response:

"I've heard the question in general just about . . . are we going to get more transparency into what we do for i. To give you a little color around why we haven't, one of the beauties of the new systems is they actually are unified. From our internal reporting structure we just have one set of machine type models, so it does make it a little bit more difficult for us to do that in a very consistent way. . . . Because we're actually seeing a fair amount of traction from customers buying into this shared infrastructure approach for both Unix and i. . . . The point is, when somebody buys a server, there actually may be multiple operating systems on it. The good news about unification is you have one set of products . . . and the flip side of that is it makes it a little bit harder to get perfect transparency in financially disclosable terms.

"But we have heard the message loud and clear that people would like more indicators of traction or success, and I think we'll be able to come out with something . . . if I just look at big animal pictures, like, 'Are the ISVs excited and are the business partners excited?' We have just been around a worldwide tour talking to all the partners, we've had good uptake, we track how many ISVs have moved over to the i platform, we've had a lot of . . . 600 applications already certified on the i 6.1 code base, which is as fast or faster than prior transitions. So as far as new technology adoptions for i, we're feeling pretty good, but obviously I can't talk about any specifics relative to revenue."

It's nice to hear that the i-performance message also made its way to Handy, in addition to Ross Mauri, general manager of IBM Power Systems, who posted a letter with some i indicators last month.

So, a unified system, multiple operating systems . . . got it. And most companies don't break out reports for operating system sales . . . got that, too. All I'm hoping for is that IBM will start reporting Power Systems financials under the new unified "Power Systems" nomenclature . . . not only is "System p" old school, it's not accurate.

We'll find out tomorrow, of course, but I'm not holding my breath. Perhaps in 2009 IBM's machine type models can really be Power Systems.

Posted by cmaxcer on October 15, 2008 at 10:26 AM | Comments (4)

October 13, 2008 8:53 AM

The 570 Over New 560, Upgrades, and More Announcement Nuggets

Following last week's official Power Systems announcements led by Scott Handy, vice president of worldwide marketing and strategy for IBM Power Systems, I spoke with Ian Jarman, manager of Power Systems software, who filled in a few of the blanks and revealed a couple of new i-focused nuggets.

IBM created a whole new Power System--the Power 560--which fits between the Power 520 and 570. The Power 560 features 4-, 8-, and 16-core configurations running 3.6 GHz POWER6 processors, and IBM says it's designed to help businesses consolidate multiple UNIX, i, or x86 workloads into fewer footprints. The Power 560 also lets customers add capacity with modular building blocks.

"The 560 16-core . . . obviously that gives you modularity in a midrange Express Server, but as it turns out, we think most of our mid- and larger-size clients are still going to be focused on the 570, which extends up to a 32-core system," Jarman says.

"It has greater scalability, it has capacity on demand, it has resiliency features like hot node add and repair, and these are the kind features that are extremely popular among our larger users, given that they typically have multiple partitions, multiple workloads," he adds.

Oh, and although the new Power 560 (and JS12 blade) requires IBM i 6.1, the new 520, 550, and 570s can work with V5R4 or IBM i 6.1. Pricing for each Power System is consistent with previous generations of hardware, Jarman says. Interestingly, although Handy said Power System pricing details would be available online on ibm.com/power, he was partially mistaken. The AIX and Linux version show pricing details, but most of the i Editions do not.

Existing 550 owners can take advantage of the bigger systems without leaping to a 560.

"If you have a POWER6 550 today, you will be able to upgrade to the 6- or 8-core Power 550," Jarman says. "So in this structure you can go from 2 cores to 4 cores to 6 cores to 8 cores, and if you've already bought a POWER6 550, you'll be protected for upgrades through the various cores, up to 8 cores. The new options in terms of memory and disk are consistent with what we've previously announced."

On the software front, the IBM Systems Director platform management solution is starting to gel. "This is really exciting for i clients, for people who have been following Systems Director. The introduction of Systems Director 6.1, which integrates with Systems Director Navigator for i, is a new foundation for platform management across IBM systems, everything from the BladeCenter and System x, through Power Systems to the mainframe," Jarman says.

"It's particularly important for people who are running x86 servers, blades, and Power Systems running i, and all of this can be managed from a platform level with Systems Director. The specific operations for the i environment are done through Systems Director Navigator, which we introduced with 6.1. So that is fully integrated, and it has the same web-based interface and links up to the platform management layer of Systems Director, which then links itself up to the service management layer of Tivoli for enterprise clients," he explains.

Although this wasn't announced during last week's official conference call, Jarman notes that DB2 Web Query picked up an update, too--IBM added Report Broker, which is a report generator for batch reporting. It lets customers create reports and automatically distribute them via email. Plus, there's a software development kit for linking Web Query functions with business applications, although IBM expects this to get the most traction via ISVs who use it for their own applications.

In addition, the private beta for the DB2 Storage Engine for MySQL is humming along. MySQL is the open-source DB for open source apps, and although IBM declined to provide a launch date for the DB2 Storage Engine, it's getting much closer to reality. So how does it work?

"The applications write to MySQL, but the data is actually stored in DB2. The advantage of doing this is that the backups and systems management can be done through DB2, and the data in DB2 can be shared with RPG applications. So you get all of the advantages of MySQL with the flexibility and simple management of DB2," Jarman explains. "This capability that's in beta now will eventually be available from MySQL."

Posted by cmaxcer on October 13, 2008 at 8:53 AM | Comments (0)

October 8, 2008 10:44 AM

IBM Intros New 560 Express Power Systems, Beefs Up i Editions

IBM has announced upgrades to its Power Systems lineup, the all-new Power 560 Express, a variety of software enhancements, and a heckuva lot of data that supports IBM's performance lead over Unix systems from rivals HP and Sun. Although the announcement made yesterday focused primarily on Power Systems that will now ship with double the number of cores in the same footprints, along with sys admin solutions most appealing to AIX users, IBM i made some gains.

Scott Handy, vice president of worldwide marketing and strategy for IBM Power Systems, delivered the announcement to the media via a webcast. He was obviously stoked about the new performance improvements, etc, and although his focus was undeniably on the hotly contested Unix market where IBM snagged 1,200 clients from HP and Sun in the last two years, he did include IBM i where it plays.

Handy showed a pie graph that reveals the market spend of the various operating systems that Power Systems covers--48 percent of the market for client spending on servers. Of that, Unix covers about 30 percent with Linux covering about 12-14 percent or so. On the graph, the i portion looked like a sliver of market-share spend.

"And then i is just a critical component to us as well . . . proportionally it is actually bigger than this chart would look because we happen to have 100 percent of the i market, which is not true for Unix and Linux, but that's an incredibly strategic part of our platform for us going forward, and this i customer base is incredibly loyal," Handy said, noting that he was delivering the webcast from Rochester, Minnesota, where the Large User Group (LUG) was meeting with IBM.

The New Power 560

Most notably, IBM introduced the new Power 560, which fits between the Power 520 and 570. The Power 560 features 4-, 8-, and 16-core configurations running 3.6 GHz POWER6 processors, and IBM says it's designed to help businesses consolidate multiple UNIX, i, or x86 workloads onto fewer footprints. The Power 560 also lets customers add capacity with modular building blocks, and more important, it offers some compelling upgrade paths to i customers currently on the 4-core 520 and 8-core 550 rather than requiring a bigger leap up to a 570.

IBM also added new options to the Power 520 Express and Power 550 Express, providing new 4- and 8-core options for i editions. Plus, AIX and Linux users can now add i on the same system.

"We doubled the headroom in our low-end i models, which the i customers will be very excited about," he said, referring to the improvements in the 520. "Now they can have four cores, same as AIX and Linux customers now. And then the 550 also doubled."

Previously AIX and Linux customers could go up to 8 cores, but the i was limited to 4 cores.

"Now all servers within the Power line have the same speeds, feeds, and options for AIX, Linux, and i across our product line, and the i customers I've talked to are very happy about that," he said.

On the BladeCenter front, the JS12 blade server running on IBM BladeCenter can now be pre-installed with i and attached to IBM's DS3200 storage to create a SAN. So basically, a customer can order a BladeCenter S with IBM i pre-installed.

IBM also beefed up the Power 570, which now ranges from 2 to 32 cores and can feature the fastest POWER6 processors (4.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz) that were previously available only in the top of the line Power 595.

The new systems will be available November 21.

In addition, IBM announced some updates to virtualization, energy management, and availability software, though the PowerVM and IBM Systems Director enhancements seem to be geared more for organizations that are running AIX with i and Linux than traditional i-focused organizations. IBM introduced:

• A beta version of PowerVM Active Memory Sharing, new virtualization software that helps clients improve memory utilization by pooling resources between partitions.
• IBM Systems Director, a new foundation for enterprise platform management, spanning multiple platforms and operating environments. Systems Director helps clients deploy, monitor, analyze, optimize and update Power server and storage physical and virtual resources running any combination of AIX, i, or Linux workloads. Systems Director is managed through an intuitive graphical interface and provides upward integration to enterprise service-management tools, including IBM Tivoli.
• A new version of Active Energy Manager, an extension to IBM Systems Director, featuring advanced energy control options designed to boost performance per watt by slowing processor clock speed or even putting processors in "nap" mode when not in use. It also lets users set an energy cap a for a single POWER6 server or even across a pool of POWER6-based servers.
• A new release of IBM iCluster, a high-availability solution based on logical replication, that integrates with IBM i service- and fix-management tools.
• A new distribution agreement with Vision Solutions for IBM to distribute Vision Cluster1, Vision's flagship enterprise cluster management solution for IBM i. (Vision previously announced this agreement October 1, and IBM had it available to order as of September 9.)
• New and updated Rational software for the i operating environment that helps geographically-distributed software delivery teams collaborate.

For more details, IBM's Power Systems site has links to all the relevant servers and software, including pricing, and if you want to geek out on all the performance improvements over the Unix competition, the official press release is packed with them.

Posted by cmaxcer on October 8, 2008 at 10:44 AM | Comments (1)

October 6, 2008 11:20 AM

So Audax Buys Another i Company--Big Deal or Not So Much?

So the private equity muscle behind Help/Systems, the Audax Group, has acquired yet another IBM i vendor--Bytware--and like its recent PowerTech acquisition, the company would apparently rather keep the whole thing behind closed doors. Although the Audax Group has issued limited press releases in the past, it hasn't with Bytware or PowerTech. On the Audax website, Help/Systems is listed as a company that's ripe for what Audax calls "strategic add-ons." Help/Systems is apparently the company Audax is using to coalesce its midrange play.

"I think the interesting thing here, and this is on a case-by-case basis, when you have one IT company purchasing another IT company it's usually done from both a strategic and tactical standpoint," says Charles King, principal analyst for Pund-IT. He notes that the best acquisitions typically help a company increase its own sales as well as its hardware or software portfolio.

In this case, the biggest extra piece that enters the portfolio might be StandGuard Anti-Virus from Bytware.

PowerTech and Bytware are private enterprises, as is Help/Systems and the company Help/Systems previously snagged, ASC. These companies aren't public, so there's no one on Wall Street they need to report to--other than private investors of the Audax Group.

"Different Critter?"

"If you have private equity companies going out and buying companies [as opposed to one solution provider buying another], that's a different critter," King says, often because it raises questions about who is going to be running the company after the acquisition takes place.

I think there's an assumption and that an industry shift going on here. The assumption is that most people simply believe that independent solution providers are either public companies or that they are owned by someone real--a man or woman who started the company, or handed it down to a son or daughter, or sold it to another company with a leader in the industry. In reality, though, lots of companies are owned by private equities--groups of smart people who see opportunities in markets to buy, sell, add, split, and make a return on investment. I'm of the belief that these sorts of folks are somewhat removed from the pride that goes into building a solution, selling it, supporting it, and seeing it get put to use by businesses around the world.

Is the lack of pride a problem? Might the cool hand of a third party do a better job of assessing risk and opportunity? How many solution providers have invested in new solutions based on false hope, pride, and desperation . . . only to fail miserably? I'm not convinced that private equity is any better or worse than any other ownership model, and in fact, it may give a company the broader backing it might need to survive rough waters.

Penton Media, the publisher of System iNEWS magazine and this website, is owned by a private equity, too. In fact, Penton Media, Inc., has changed hands a number of times, and the private equity muscle behind the magazines has acquired and added other publications to the mix. Just for the record, Penton Media is owned by MidOcean Partners and U.S. Equity Partners II, an investment fund sponsored by Wasserstein & Co., LP, and its co-investors. The information is easily found online on PentonMedia.com as well as on SystemiNetwork.com--though it is a bit harder to find the links on SystemiNetwork.com to Penton Media.

So who am I to get all excited about companies' owners changing hands if for all intents and purposes the companies will remain as independent operating units? Does anyone really care?

In a very real sense, the fact that the Audax Group bought Bytware is a non-story. Consider this: PowerTech was previously owned by a private equity . . . who knew? Did it matter to the solution and service? Didn't seem to. What about Vision Solutions? Private equity company Thoma Cressey Bravo owns Vision and brokered the deals that led to the acquisition of iTera and Lakeview Technology. Is the System i industry any worse off with a consolidated power player--Vision--instead of three solution providers trading punches and customer contracts? In fact, a larger, more stable company may be better for customers than when one of three might bite the dust entirely.

"For all the talk about innovation, what most businesses are looking for is stability and reliability--they want to know that that vendor and its products will be around for the long haul," King notes, pointing out that a lot of companies got stung by the dot-com bust.

Still, There's One Point that Bugs Me

If you believe that competition brings innovation, then the Bytware, PowerTech, Help/Systems trifecta means you've got "competing" security solutions all owned by the same company, which means there isn't any real competition between those three companies. You can't fake competition.

However, that's a small issue. If there's enough demand, competition will rise from the industry. Happens all the time.

Plus, private equities can often push businesses to do a better job of producing, selling, and maintaining their products. New ownership can be the catalyst to get things done.

Still, these are just minor points.

If a company has a sizable investment in technology, acquisitions can take on new meaning. "You've got to ask yourself, 'Is this product that I'm highly dependent on going to get the support and investment it had in the past?' You can assume that in the short term, the products will continue performing as advertised. But what about two, three, or four years down the road?" King says, adding, "It's very important for the companies interested in making these acquisitions to keep the customers in the informational loop the same way they do with major institutional investors."

The bottom line for me is that these companies are selling solutions to other enterprises that in turn bet their businesses on these solutions. In this case, the lines of ownership should be clear and easily found. Vision clearly says it's privately held by Thoma Cressey Bravo. With the others, I cannot easily find a trace of ownership on their respective sites . . . why is that?

I can't think of a good reason to not make the information clear. Can you?

More important these days, I'm wondering if anyone--customers, prospective customers, or non-customers--even still cares?

Posted by cmaxcer on October 6, 2008 at 11:20 AM | Comments (3)

October 1, 2008 10:16 AM

Power Systems GM Ross Mauri Posts Open i Letter

IBM has posted an open letter from Ross Mauri, general manager of IBM Power Systems. "I am writing now to update all our i clients around the world on our progress with that transition and to make sure you know that IBM's commitment to i clients and the i operating environment is solid and unchanged," he notes.

Mauri says the transition to the new Power Systems is going extremely well. "In 3Q08, we expect that the majority of IBM i shipments will be on POWER6 processor-based Power Systems, and, as a result, the older System i servers based on POWER5+ technology are gradually being withdrawn. We expect to complete this transition by the end of 2008," he says, noting that the new Power Systems continue to support System i-based applications.

IBM i 6.1 brings along new features, too. "IBM i 6.1 includes expanded virtualization options, enhanced SAN storage and high-availability clustering management, breakthrough Java performance, the first support for running i on a blade, new browser-based Systems Director Navigator management tools, plus a wide range of enhancements to our DB2 database and middleware tools to help drive business transformation. Today, only six months after its introduction, more than 1,000 applications from leading ISVs are supported on i 6.1," Mauri notes.

Mauri wraps up the heart of the letter with assurance that IBM i is important. "The i operating environment is an important, strategic element in the IBM product portfolio, and we are making substantial investments in the future of i because its continued success in the market is essential to IBM’s overall business performance," he writes. "Our IBM Rochester development team is already working on the next release of IBM i planned for 2010."

For those interested in learning more about how IBM i is playing with the latest technology trends, Mauri signs off with a link to an IDC white paper on IBM's site.

Posted by cmaxcer on October 1, 2008 at 10:16 AM | Comments (6)