System iNetwork

October 15, 2008

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 at October 15, 2008 10:26 AM