The major characteristics of IBM i on Power Systems are the main selling points of IBM PureSystems.
I won't go too deeply into it here because it's all too familiar. You save money on manpower, save computer room space, you have intelligent computing and integrated everything. Those key words of Expert Integrated Systems kept ringing about like an IBM i announcement: integration by design, simplified experience, built-in experience. We've been touting similar concepts for years since the days of the AS/400. I'm not saying I'm unimpressed with PureSystems...far from it actually. It's all those familiar features on human growth hormone plus more. PureSystems takes these concepts and builds a better mouse trap, truly looking like a very promising future. I felt somewhat vindicated during the announcement actually. It felt like suddenly the rest of the world was being introduced to the concepts IBM i enthusiasts have been raving about forever and a day.
On April 11th, the day of the announcement, I read many news articles on the web regarding IBM PureSystems and there was a serious issue: hardly a mention of IBM i as a supported operating system.
The New York Times, Information Week, ZDNet and many more listed AIX, Linux (in both Power and x86 flavors) and Windows. No IBM i. And nobody bothered to fix those articles even after I called them on it.
Forbes was one of the only major online magazines that mentioned IBM i. Kudos to you, Roger Kay.
Timothy Prickett Morgan at IT Jungle (a competitor of MC Press, who I write for) went really deep on the features as well. So deep, in fact, that I sent him a personal note thanking him for it.
But how did this glaring omission happen?
In a major announcement from IBM, I would imagine their people would dot the i's (no pun intended) and cross the t's without mercy. It's not hard to imagine that no stone would go unturned. I'd assume they'd want to hit as many people as possible and say "we have the future technology path for you." Well, us IBM i folks had to go and find the correct information ourselves. I bet you a nickel that Steve Will's You and i blog had more hits that day than any other IBM i focused website, because Steve, who is IBM's Chief Architect for IBM i, had posted the answer we were all hoping to find there.
Did multiple news sources make the mistake? I could see one or two potentially miss an operating system flavor, but not this many.
With all due respect, I have to ask this question: IBM, did you forget to mention IBM i to the press?
IBM Connections on IBM i - DB2, JDBC and IASPs
Mon, Apr 29th 2013 9:21p Steve Pitcher For anyone looking to do an IBM Connections install on IBM i, the biggest "gotcha" I encountered was due to the fact that I have an Independent Auxilliary Storage Pool (IASP) defined in my relational database directory entries list (think WRKRDBDIRE). If you're using IBM PowerHA for replication then you'll have an IASP defined. I would log into the Connections homepage successfully but then get an error that the request couldn't be completed. I found errors in the systemout.log for each a [read] Keywords: connections
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Installing WebSphere Portal and IBM Web Content Manager
Thu, Mar 7th 2013 10:13a Steve Pitcher The installation instructions for WebSphere Portal on IBM i could be a little more clear. I'll be submitting my suggestions to IBM to update them. Here's what I did in order to install Portal and WCM on IBM i. If you're not using IBM i, but want to do a silent installation using response files, you may still get some value out of this. I downloaded the following images from IBM Passport Advantage. All these images need to be consolidated in a single repository. More on that below. CI7 [read] Keywords: ibm
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A Lotus Domino Server Installed/Patched In 57 Seconds
Fri, Feb 15th 2013 8:23p Steve Pitcher I had to load a new Domino server this afternoon for a new product we've purchased. Once I hit the Enter key to set the server installer program into action I got up, walked twenty feet and refilled my cup with black coffee. I had a quick look out the window and walked back to my laptop with the server ready to rock n' roll. That was pretty fast...so I did another installation test and timed it at 76 seconds. I traded tweets with Keith Brooks who interestingly did a upgrade time trial on [read] Keywords: domino
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Chocolate Chip Cookies
Sun, Jan 20th 2013 11:17a Steve Pitcher OK, this post is far from technical but I wanted to share it because I'm a big food guy. I do a lot of the cooking in our house. In the last few months I've been trying my hand at baking sweets, cookies, breads, etc. I may even start a different blog for that type of content. I've made some decent chocolate chip cookies in the last little while but they turned out flat like a normal homemade cookie. I wanted to get more "fluff" so I began playing around with cream cheese as a partial [read] Keywords:
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Business Agility and Efficiency with Consolidation
Mon, Jan 14th 2013 11:00a Steve Pitcher At IBM Connect, Tim Rowe, Roxanne Reynolds-Lair and I will review how business value can be achieved with the state-of-the-art collaboration solutions running on Power Systems while keeping a simplified, agile and efficient IT environment. http://www.vivastream.com/events/connect2013/sessions/CUST112 [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Goodbye Active Directory?
Sat, Dec 29th 2012 8:21p Steve Pitcher For me, just maybe. I'm going to at least give this a solid look. We have a loose migration plan for all of our x64-based Microsoft Windows servers to IBM Power Systems. All except our Active Directory servers. We use those for Group Policy, Domain authentication, Domino web authentication, DNS and a few other familiar functions. As per ZDNet, the release of Samba 4 appears to be a viable alternative to Active Directory. More to come once I dig a bit more information about it. I wonder i [read] Keywords: domino
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Selling the Metal!
Tue, Dec 18th 2012 7:07a Steve Pitcher Here's a piece I wrote for MC Press Online. Check it out. In the Wheelhouse: Selling the Metal Let's dissect two studies that put IBM i at the top of the list for lowest total cost of ownership, total cost of acquisition, and total amounts of awesome! You want justification? You got it. ITG Studies to Help You Sell the Metal International Technology Group (ITG) recently published two studies that talk about total cost of ownership, total cost of acquisition, risk exposure, cost of downt [read] Keywords: ibm
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We're Speaking At IBM Connect 2013!
Fri, Dec 14th 2012 7:50p Steve Pitcher Yes! Now the real work begins! All sessions are listed here. Session Business Agility and Efficiency with Consolidation Program Lotusphere - For IT Practitioners Track Track 08: Customer Case Studies (from an IT perspective) Activity Type Lecture Speaker(s) Tim Rowe, IBM; Steve Pitcher, Scotsburn Dairy Group; Roxanne Reynolds-Lair, Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising Abstract In todays flat world, successful businesses have their staff, customers and business partne [read] Keywords: collaboration
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