System i5 security vendor Bytware Inc. has wrapped up its i5 online game, where contestants navigated YouTube videos and searching for clues on different Web sites to solve a fictional System i security mystery, all the while learning about PHP and i5/OS security.

The grand prize winner, who gets a Nintendo Wii, was Anna Musella-Chiasson, a senior iSeries analyst with Canadian company CGI. There were also four winners of $100 gift certificates at Apple: Kristina Alcorn, a senior systems engineer at the Automotive Retail Group in Troy, Mich,; Suzanne Dahms, the executive VP at Union Bank in Lake Odessa, Mich.; John Pfitzner, a programmer at EFCO Corp. in Monett, Mo.; and Patrick Sczypiorski, an applications systems manager at Velvac in New Berlin, Wis.

The game will remain online, although Bytware didn’t say for how long.

Arthur Cole at IT Business Edge has a blog post speculating over whether IBM is “looking to get out of the server hardware market before virtualization sends it crashing to the floor.”

Cole’s argument is that despite IBM’s denials, its moves indicate that it is leading toward being more of a software company. There’s no doubt that IBM’s software division is a huge leg of its business. But can it and the services/support leg be the only ones IBM needs to stand on?

Cole points to the announcement by IBM that Lenovo, the owner of Big Blue’s former PC unit, will begin selling rebranded IBM x86 servers later this year. Cole wrote that while System x revenue rose 8% last year, overall server sales at IBM were flat, and so System x was a prime platform to be outsourcing.

Of course, System p revenues also increased last year, by 9%. Perhaps another reason IBM chose System x is because x86 servers aren’t much different than PC hardware and thus fit Lenovo’s business plan better.

Cole also sees IBM’s acquisition of AptSoft as an indication that IBM is focusing more on software. Then he hits on the virtualization theme again:

But if virtualization does start to tear into server demand as the experts predict, it probably does makes sense to unload hardware lines onto companies that can survive on smaller volumes.

Here’s the thing, though. What company would take on the System i or z lines, or even p for that matter? They’re all built on a more specialized architecture — which includes proprietary IBM hardware such as mainframe and Power processors — than commodity x86 servers. If IBM outsources its server hardware, will it start outsourcing its processors as well?

If this does happen, if it ever happens, it’s a long, long ways down the road.

The IT Jungle has a bunch of user feedback regarding the System i, where it’s going, and where it should be going. This comes in the midst of a small revenue increase for the platform announced by IBM last week. Still, the platform isn’t nearly out of the weeds yet, and to be able to survive, IBM needs to listen to its customer base.

The suggestions range from the usual complaint about the name of the platform — one user astutely says: “Google ‘i’ and you will see my point” — to another wishing that IBM would make RPG a “true Web Programming Language,” to another sadly wishing that IBM would see the i5/OS to another company such as Oracle or Zend “that has the necessary get up and go to make the improvement to the OS that it needs to compete.”

In its earnings report last week, IBM announced that revenue for System i was up 2%. It’s the first time System i revenue has been up year-over-year in two years. The chief financial officer at IBM, Mark Loughridge, said the rise was due to the introduction of Power6 System i 570.

Although the 2% increase is compared to a 10% decrease in the fourth quarter of 2006, it’s still a whole lot better than it going down again. And given Loughridge’s reasons for the increase, it’s fair to think that revenues might continue to rise in 2008 when more Power6 boxes become available.

The iSeries COBOL programmer explains how to use the INITIALIZE statement for the System i. This is an add-on to an earlier post that had some errors in it, but the new post has corrected them to explain the importance of the function on the platform.

As an example, the post looks at fields within working storage, describing how the INITIALIZE field is meant to reset all of them to either zero if they’re numerical fields, or a space if they’re character fields.

Chris Hird has a post detailing how he upgraded his WebSphere Development Studio Client, and it’s interesting to see all the steps and downloads he had to endure in order to get there.

Hird said he’d been working with Remote Systems Explorer (RSE), a System i plug-in to WebSphere, for a couple months. The plug-in allows System i users to do such things as view and respond to System i messages from within WebSphere and compare and merge editors for System i source code.

Looking to upgrade was an issue, however, as Hird was having trouble using the upgrade function within RSE’s integrated development environment (IDE). But eventually he figured out a way to do it, although it took some serious time. Check out the post.

Timothy Prickett Morgan has an article over at the IT Jungle taking a look at product cycles for i5/OS and OS/400 — in particular, how long users can expect to receive support and upgrades on V5 releases when i5/OS V6R1 comes out, which is expected early this year.

Morgan mentions that IBM has stopped upgrades on V5R1 and V5R2 to V5R3 on Jan. 4, but hasn’t announced the stop date for upgrades from V5R2 and V5R3 to V5R4. He estimates that IBM will stop selling V5R4 about a year after announcing V6R1, but could end up stretching that to two years depending on user reaction.

Meanwhile, he sees the release of V6R1, along with some Power6-based blades running i5/OS expected out this year, to be a great opportunity for IBM to get some new customers — particularly SMBs — into the System i fold, as well as convincing existing ones to make the jump.

The way that RPG handles files on the System i requires intricate knowledge of how RPG works in order to make sure that references to a certain record field point where they should.

iDevelop has a good post outlining how pointing to the first of a sequence of fields in a record might be a risky venture. It explains that the data should be defined within a data structure in RPG to ensure “contiguous storage.” Check it out.

IBM often touts System i as an easy-to-manage platform, and for good reason. But still, IT gets more complex, and complexity can breed chaos without some level of control.

MC Press Online, which just recently redesigned its site, has a good article about systems management of System i. The article is by Andy Kowalsky, a senior product manager at Vision Solutions, so those of you who aren’t crazy about Vision’s customer service may take it with a grain of salt. Still, the article goes into a significant amount of detail on System i systems management, and it’s worth a look. Here’s an overview from the article:

The value of optimization and tighter management of System i is clear, but where should you begin? Start with the tasks that will deliver the utmost impact, with the least effort. This article examines the following five areas that typically provide the greatest benefits:

• Compression
• Physical file reorganization
• QSYS and IFS object clean-up
• Logical file optimization
• Data, CPU, and I/O usage monitoring

In mid-December, we published an interview with Marc Dupaquier, who was the general manager of IBM’s Business Systems division. Well, it looks like it was just a one-year contract. An IBM reorganization at the beginning of this year has altered the Business Systems unit. Big Blue’s System and Technology Group (STG) is now focused around clients: Enterprise Systems, Business Systems, Industry Systems and Microelectronics. Dupaquier isn’t leading any of those groups.

IBM is also divvying up its platforms into mainframes, Power-based systems (System p and i), “modular” systems (System x and BladeCenter), and storage. Dupaquier isn’t heading any of those either. The Power-based systems group will be led by Ross Mauri, who has been heading the System p division.

It will be interesting to see if System i garners significant attention from any of these division heads. It seems like they’re blending System i into System p and letting the System p folks lead it all. We’ll see if that affects System i innovation.