I just returned from the Opening Session of this years Common Conference here in Anaheim.

I was surprised to here about the new Common Skills Portal: http://www.common.org/skills/ Something I’m certainly going to spend a little time looking at!

Some time was spent honoring Common’s best speakers, followed by a presentation of iSociety: http://isociety.common.org/

Mark Shearer took the stage along with Dr. Frank.

Dr. Frank had just come from 1998 and was quite surprised to here how his beloved AS400 had turned out. It was a lot of fun to watch. Even though I think Dr. Frank should keep his day job and leave acting to the pros (Ha! Just kidding… )

Mark continued on with his presentation and spent some time talking about Blade Center integration, IP Telephony, Capacity Backup systems, PHP and MySql…

Next we got to here more about the recently announced System i Express systems - http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/redp5052.html

As at every Common Conference we heard that IBM was going to improve the marking of the System i .. Nothing new here <smile>

Mark also talked about how IBM was working to help improve the System i Skills shortage. Something we all should be concerned about. To learn more about this initiative take a look here:

http://www-304.ibm.com/jct09002c/university/scholars/products/iseries/index.html

 We got to see another skit making fun of Intel Servers… This is always good for a laugh and then the session closed with a few minutes of Q&A …

All in all I enjoyed attending … and I wish all of you could have been here too…

Kenneth

This is getting to be like a broken record, but System i revenues dropped again, this time 13 percent, in the first quarter of this year. It is the sixth consecutive quarter that year-over-year revenue has gone down. IBM said weak upgrade sales on the platform caused the decline.

Compared to the same quarter two years ago, System revenue is down about 33 percent. That’s a hard slump.
This time, System i’s drop was in the midst of gains on all other platforms: systems z, p and x. It’s not for lack of investment by IBM. In the last year it introduced a VoIP solution with 3Com exclusively on the System i, as well as new entry-level System i boxes.

But analysts say System i suffers from a marketing problem.

Some of you may have seen this week that IBM is touting Linux on System p as a prime server consolidation platform. The announcement includes new software from IBM that allows x86 Linux applications to run natively on the System p without having to port or recompile the applications using Chiphopper.

My question is: Why just System p and not System i as well? Maybe they don’t see the market for Linux on System i as there is on System p. Are there any System i junkies out there who would want this feature?

These longer, more detailed comments at the System i Network are even better than the previous post, in my humble opinion. In this installment, users wonder aloud about the 40-user cap with the 515 machine. Why? They ask. David Vasta over at iSeries Addict has the same question, and isn’t shy about his criticism:

Why would you make the fastest, and most reliable system, the i5 in a nice small affordable package and then put a limit on it? Why? Please someone with brains take over the i5 business unit at IBM and do something right for a change? In the last 20 years IBM has bumbled the i5 product line like a bunch of keystone cops. They get something right like the price and the size and then do something stupid like put a cap on the number of users.

I like when sites like System iNetwork do reader feedback stories that just include blurbs from readers on what they think about various System i and iSeries issues. Right now the buzz is around the new System i 515 and 525 boxes targeted for small-to-medium businesses.

The responses obviously include positive and negative feedback; I only wish there had been more overall. My favorite from the bunch is the last: “The customer may have somebody familiar with PC hardware concepts, and that person may get the setup job, but customers need to be convinced that it is an easy server to setup and get going so that they spread the word.”

Hey, System i Planet has a ton of links today to IBM support documents for WebSphere. Having issues with PTFs, migration, daylight savings, etc.? Check this out, seriously. I counted more than 50 links there, it’s a nice resource.

Magic Software, a big System i software vendor, has announced a special edition of its iBolt software for SAP R/3. The iBolt software focuses on connecting applications to business process management, and Magic has been in the AS/400, iSeries and System i space for 12 years.

We did a customer case study earlier this year on Farm Mutual Reinsurance Plan Inc. that needed a quicker way to get its claims management data into its J.D. Edwards ERP system. Magic Software helped them automate that. Has anyone out there done anything similar to that?

Yes, there are still plenty of one-man System i shops out there. Some of the challenges: small budgets, no time for training, and lack of programming resources. Solutions: free software, local user groups, and cheap interns.

Who else is a one-man System i shop out there?

As this column on MC Press explains, getting out from under legacy technology doesn’t necessarily mean you have to dump your System i. In fact, this writer claims that the System i is “cutting edge.”

However, he does say that System i folks should start looking into modernizing their environment, mainly be getting away from 5250 green-screen interfaces and bringing applications to the Web. What are you doing out there to modernize your System i, and if you’re not, why not?

There will be another iSociety “fireside chat” tomorrow, this time with Jim Herring and Ian Jarman. Herring, the IBM System i products and business operations director, and Jarman, a System i product manager, will likely be talking about the new System i servers that IBM announced yesterday.

The last “fireside chat” three weeks ago was with Susan Gantner, Skip Marchesani, Paul Tuohy and Jon Paris, the people who run System i Developer. The iSociety started last year with its goal being a sort of MySpace for System i users.