Interest in Blades, POWER7, PowerVM Picking Up

I reached out to Stan Staszak, director of infrastructure services for Sirius, which is a large IBM Business Partner that does a lot of IBM i-related sales, for a quick chat. Staszak says Sirius is "seeing a fair amount of system upgrade activity lately."

So what about interest in any particular models of Power Systems for IBM i these days?

"Many of our customers are taking a serious look at the Power Blade solutions. It might not be a good fit for everyone, but it can be really attractive from a pricing standpoint," Staszak says. "I think more companies are starting to adopt some form of blade-based server solutions in their data centers, so customers may be somewhat more receptive to blades now—as opposed to traditional rack or tower based servers."

Any speed bumps for IBM i customers looking at a blade path?

"The obvious challenge to an IBM i on Blade solution is the learning curve. Customers have to become familiar with VIOS and external storage servers—unless they utilize the internal disk on the BladeCenter S chassis," he explains.

So are customers already looking forward to POWER7—or not so much yet?

"Yes, I think customers are really looking forward to the POWER7 and [IBM i] announcements next year—I've seen a lot of interest in recent months," Staszak says.

How about storage—any interesting trends or technology of interest these days?

"I think the recent DS5XXX native attach announcement was interesting. Only time will tell how receptive customers will be to that model (on the IBM i platform). I also like and appreciate the fact that IBM is continuing to invest in internal SAS disk and controllers. IBM i customers don't like to feel that they are forced to adopt some new technology," Staszak says. "We have seen some IBM i accounts implement external storage, and I'm sure that others will go that route in the future, but it's nice to have a valid internal disk alternative for customers who prefer internal disk."

How about PowerVM . . . any IBM i-focused action?

"Absolutely, the majority of our customers have already employed a virtualized strategy in the form of LPAR's, which necessitates a PowerVM license. Also, PowerVM is required if they choose to implement VIOS in their environment," Staszak says. "I haven't seen any IBM i customers trying Active Memory Sharing yet, but this technology would also require PowerVM," he adds.

—Chris Maxcer, News Editor

COMMON Hints at Opening Session

COMMON's Opening Session at its 50th anniversary meeting event in Orlando this May is coming together—the user group released some nuggets that include none other than IBM CEO Sam Palmisano and Rod Adkins, senior vice president of the IBM Systems and Technology Group.

Here's a snip from COMMON's event page:

The Annual Meeting will kick off on Monday, May 3, 2010 with the Opening Session, which will include a special message to the attendees from Sam Palmisano, IBM's Chairman of the Board, President, and Chief Executive Officer! The Opening Session will also feature a keynote address by Rod Adkins, Senior Vice President, IBM Systems and Technology Group. This is an unprecedented level of support and recognition of COMMON from IBM with representation at our 50th Anniversary Celebration by IBM's two top executives. It will be a kickoff event that you do will not want to miss!

As of the printing of this issue we hadn't heard any more details about what the message will be or how it would be delivered.

I'd look for a live feed or a video. Special message seems to imply just that, and if Palmisano was indeed going to be onsite, I'm guessing COMMON would have said so.

Meanwhile, look for the next version of IBM i to be announced around the event, as well as some tangible solutions that IBM mentioned back in October 2009.

—Chris Maxcer, News Editor

iManifest Looking to Rock and Roll in U.S.

First came the iManifest initiative in Japan, next came a similar initiative in Europe, and now, iManifest is brewing in the United States. Led by author and IBM i consultant Jeff Olen, the initiative is modeled after the original Japanese effort: founding members are IBM i-focused vendors who see a need for i-focused marketing and are willing to pony up some cash to tout their support for the legendary, yet increasingly overshadowed, IBM i system.

Most recently, Dr. Frank Soltis joined the iManifest U.S. board of directors. Soltis is, of course, the primary creator of the architecture used in IBM's Power Systems. A recently retired IBM chief scientist, Soltis has remained active in the IBM i ecosystem. iManifest U.S. says he will lend his expertise and insight to help guide the iManifest team as they set out to improve the communication about the systems he helped create.

iManifest U.S. also has been building a group of supporters of about 50 companies. The founding members will work to create the iManifest mission statement and launch the initiative, which is set to include a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal—or something similar to the Japanese IBM i Manifest. The cost for the ad? About a $150,000.

A large supporting vendor, for example, would have annual revenues greater than $30 million and be willing to commit $12,000 toward the ad, while small companies with less than $2 million in revenue would offer $1,500.

"Interest thus far has been very positive," Olen says. "Companies are steadily coming forward to join the effort. Some are more enthusiastic than others (e.g., ProData, Raz-Lee, and BCD have issued their own press releases confirming their participation.). I can't really say whether there are many vendors that are unaware of iManifest or not. As more time goes by I would expect that fewer and fewer would be unaware. There are some companies that are holding back. I have spoken or corresponded with several companies who are waiting to see what IBM's response is. We are trying to get these companies to see that IBM is not going to promote the IBM i. There are various reasons given for this, but whatever the reason it is a fact."

Still, some have questioned the value of a one-day full-page advertisement. "The two things we communicate to those people are: 1, the iManifest is NOT just about a one-time ad. There are ongoing operations and task forces that will be continuing to work toward the iManifest objectives," Olen says. "And 2, the full-page ad is not mandatory. Once the initiative has its founding members and is fully funded, then those members will elect a board of directors. It will be up to the board of directors to decide how best to get the word out."

The iManifest United States has a group on LinkedIn, and you can find more details on joining at imanifest-us.com.

—Chris Maxcer, News Editor

MCS Acquires Barsa Systems Distribution

Maximum Computer Systems, Inc., (MCS), which is an IBM Business Partner and solution provider in the NYC metro area, has acquired Barsa Systems Distribution, Inc. The acquisition expands MCS sales and technical expertise in the Northeast and strengthens its capabilities in IBM Power Systems, System x, middleware, Infor A+ ERP software, CPU Security, EDI, Document Management, Electronic Forms High Availability, and Internet Security for the SMB marketplace.

Barsa Systems Distribution is one of two portions of the Barsa business—the other is Barsa Consulting Group, LLC. Of course, many active COMMON and IBM i-focused professionals know that these businesses were headed by Al Barsa, Jr., who was an icon of the i world and died in 2008 while attending the COMMON conference in Nashville.

Barsa Systems Distribution is an IBM Premier Business Partner founded in 1982 and headquartered in Purchase, New York. Barsa Systems Distribution was recognized as a leading IBM solution provider in the Northeast, with more than $10 million in total revenues in 2008 and a client base of more than 200 throughout the tri-state area, New England, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC.

"This acquisition fits perfectly into our growth strategy," notes MCS President Philip Maehr. "By combining the skills of two veteran IBM Business Partners with complementary skills, we strengthen our market penetration as MCS concentrated in the SMB marketplace, while Barsa Distribution was skilled in serving medium to enterprise level customers." Barsa Systems Distribution customers will continue to be serviced and supported by skilled professionals while part of a larger, stronger combined business entity, MCS says.

"We are all excited that Al's legacy will be preserved at MCS," says Sue Barsa, president of Barsa Consulting Group, LLC. "They are a strong IBM partner in the New York Metro area and like us, built their business on client-focused solutions, technical expertise, client satisfaction, and loyalty to IBM."

—Chris Maxcer, News Editor

Video Walkthrough: Calling RPG From EGL CE

While IBM's newest business computing language, EGL, is nowhere near replacing RPG, there's still plenty of uncertainty surrounding it. For some, it hides unnecessary complexity, and for others, it seems too complex. For still others, it represents an excellent way to rapidly develop Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). Dan Darnell, an independent consultant who specializes in modernizing System i applications through the use of EGL, has noted that you really have to use EGL to appreciate it.

The new free EGL Community Edition offered by IBM offers a stepping stone into the EGL world, and Darnell has gone one step better: he's posted an 8-minute screencast video walkthrough that shows how to use EGL CE to call an RPG program. From the video, you'll learn:

• Setup steps required to call RPG from EGL/CE
• Construction of a service to call the RPG program
• Construction of a Rich UI to invoke the service
• Debugging client and service code

Check it out on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=lA25DoElnSc

—Chris Maxcer, News Editor

Virtual Tape Appliance Makes Deploying Storage Virtualization Easy

When it comes to storage, virtualization is becoming increasingly feasible. To get a feel for how things are trending in this area, I recently spoke with Glenn Haley, senior product manager at Crossroads Systems, which just released its new SPHiNX for Power Systems virtual tape solution.

System iNEWS: What trends are you seeing in storage?

Haley: Storage is interesting in that at the very low-level SCSI commands, for example, things haven't changed a lot. But with regard to trends, we have started to see some significant things happen: One is the changing of costs. For example, the cost of disk has decreased, enabling it to be more acceptable as a storage medium for data over longer periods of time. Also, storage virtualization, which as a technology has been around a long time in the i market, is now being adopted more as a way to perform server consolidation and storage.

With the cost of disk coming down so much, the use of disk for storing data over longer periods of time becomes interesting. Data reduction technologies are allowing users to further expand upon the economies of disk. This said, data deduplication as a form of data reduction is proving to be the hottest trend in storage over the last decade. Reduced disk costs and IP connectivity is also enabling storage to be treated more as a Software as a Service (SaaS). Cloud computing is emerging as a way to offer storage as a service, especially among smaller companies that lack the storage resources or infrastructure to support backup operations in-house. Connectivity is really changing the storage paradigm as well. Fibre should become more mainstream, as will 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GigE), using iSCSI as a SAN type of connection.

And finally, although physical tape media has been used for nearly a decade or more to archive data, I'd say that companies are placing more emphasis on data archiving as well as steps necessary to ensure that they can restore data from their storage devices—especially with today's increasing set of regulatory compliance pressures, e-discovery requests, and corporate lawsuits.

System iNEWS: What do you think is important for readers to know about how SPHiNX for Power Systems can benefit their shops?

Haley: The goal of SPHiNX is to satisfy the challenges of the IBM i. In a nutshell, SPHiNX for Power Systems is a dedicated appliance that helps optimize data protection and resiliency of data for Power System environments while dramatically decreasing the cost of maintaining a backup and recovery solution. Our goal is to provide efficiency to the customer. SPHiNX can improve not only performance and storage capacity but can also leverage existing investments in existing disk infrastructure. Customers can use HP, IBM, Hitachi, EMC, and more, as well as connect existing tape devices (e.g., a drive or library) on the back end of SPHiNX.

Our goal is not to be a tape replacement solution, but instead SPHiNX is more of a tape augmentation type of solution. We look like tape and sound like tape, but we're more efficient and faster. However, SPHiNX's ability to be an alternate IPL device is one of the features that has received the strongest response from our customers and partners. SPHiNX isn't modifying the file system structure, therefore regarding any of those option 21 system saves that are so important—you're able to use SPHiNX to restore the entire system image as needed without using physical tape.

Finally, SPHiNX has a great deal of future scalability and a lot of growth potential with respect to the Power Systems environment.

—Linda Harty, Executive Editor

Feds Arrest IBM Exec Moffat

One of IBM's top executives, Robert Moffat, senior vice president and group executive at IBM's Systems and Technology Group, was arrested in October on insider trading charges. The arrest happened in conjunction with the widely reported arrests of Raj Rajaratnam and Danielle Chiesi on insider trading charges.

According to The National Business Review, Moffat's charges stem from information provided to Chiesi about Sun Microsystems, following IBM's interest in acquiring Sun.

If you want to read the complaint, you can find it online at usdoj.gov. Try page 19 for the Martha Stewart reference that implies complete understanding of insider trading. The Moffat wiretap references start on page 22.

—Chris Maxcer, News Editor

IBM's Mauri Writes Letter to i Clients

In an open letter to IBM i customers, Ross Mauri, general manager of IBM Power Systems, highlights IBM's next major release of IBM i, plus notes that 100 percent of today's IBM i sales are on the new POWER6 platform. "Our IBM i clients not only run on the industry's fastest processors, but can also look forward with confidence as we prepare to deliver POWER7 processor-based systems in 2010," Mauri says.

"With our clearly defined roadmaps for POWER processors and the IBM i operating environment, IBM's commitment to our i clients is solid and unchanged. We are making substantial investments in the future of i as an important, strategic element in the IBM product portfolio. Thank you for your business and your confidence in the future of one of the world’s most durable and productive platforms for business," Mauri writes.

—Chris Maxcer, News Editor