There have been plenty of arguments for and against putting System i on a blade server. Proponents say that being able to have their i, p and x86 servers all in one BladeCenter chassis is a big selling point. Detractors worry that I/O performance won’t be the same on a blade, or that System i shops in general don’t really need the small-form factor of the blade.

But as Chris Maxcer points out in his talk with IBM business partner Sirius, interest in the i blade has been high so far, but sales are low. Why? Well, when you get to the end of the post, it seems that maybe it’s just because System i blades are still in their infancy. IBM announced the first i blade at the beginning of April, so we’re only a couple months in.

Because it’s early on, configurations are limited. Users can get IBM i (formerly i5/OS) on the JS12 blade, which has a single dual-core Power chip, or the JS22 blade, which has two dual-core Power chips. Even there, though, there is some confusion on IBM’s own website regarding the JS22. While one Power blade overview site mentions support for IBM i on the JS22, the more detailed server specs page says nothing about IBM i support. In the end it doesn’t matter that much — if JS22 supports IBM i, then it supports it. But there could be some confusion in the meantime from users (or nosy reporters) browsing the site.

Maxcer also quotes Sirius as saying that there essentially needs to be a trifecta for a user to want to buy i blades. One, they have to be an i user. Second, they should probably already be running blades and have a BladeCenter chassis on the ready (with empty slots, of course). And finally, Sirius said the user would also have to have DS4000 or DS8000 external storage server.

One final note on the post: At the end, we find out that Sirius is actually bullish on i blades, with the director of System i and x products at the company saying that “(i)n the future, five-to-ten years, it’s going to be widely adopted.”

Ken Jack, a software engineer at trucking software company TMW Systems, has created the T-shirt you see to the right. He has it on his personal CafePress website called iWhatever.

Jack reflects the anguish of many System i users — er, users running i on Power Systems — who have a hard time figuring out what to call the server platform on which they run all their business applications. In a recent story on feedback of the System i/p merger, one user told me that he spent a long time trying to convince everyone in his organization that the server and platform should be called System i and i5/OS, not AS/400, iSeries, or OS/400.

Now that IBM has renamed it again to Power Systems and just “i,” expect some folks to just say forget it and start calling it AS/400 again.

That’s how Jack feels, as is apparent by this T-shirt he’s selling. He’s been selling a similar shirt for a while now, just adding on whenever IBM decides to rename the platform again.

“It’s honestly to the point where if IBM changes the name one more time, I’m going to have to put ‘continued on other side…’ on the front of the T-shirts,” Jack wrote in an email to me. “Just last month somebody bought a shirt that stopped at ‘System i.’ I bet he’s pissed.”

What are they calling it at TMW Systems? Jack said that “everybody at our shop still calls it ‘The 400.’ ‘Power System running i’ is just too much of a mouthful.”

By the way, in addition to buying the T-shirt, you can also buy other merchandise with the logo on it: mousepad, coffee mug, baseball cap, etc.

This may be the last time IBM reports System i hardware revenues on their own. Seeing as the platform is now officially merged with System p into a new Power Systems, future hardware revenue figures will probably reflect that.

It’s probably a good thing.

System i revenues dropped 21 percent compared to the year-ago period. That compares to increased or flat revenue numbers from the other platforms — System z was up 10 percent, System p up 2 percent, and System x flat. Aside from a small blip at the end of last year, hardware revenues for the System i platform have been dropping steadily for a while now. Let’s take a look at the last three years per quarter:

Compare that to System p revenues in the same period:

Are there anymore questions about why IBM decided to merge the two platforms? Aside from the benefits of having a single hardware platform on the Power processor, the merger will eliminate those ugly-looking, often double-digit revenue decreases that System i was experiencing quarter after quarter after quarter.

That is the question many System i users out there are asking. As you can see from some comments last year, some were looking forward to i5 blades, and some were not.

A familiar misgiving is that many of the smaller System i shops aren’t that worried about the space constraints that a smaller form factor like blades can help solve. They’re usually running one box in production and maybe a second for DR, and that’s it. Buying the expensive BladeCenter chassis might not make sense for them.

Those that might take to it are the more heterogenous shops that are running System i along with a lot of x86 servers in their data center. Being able to combine all that processing power into one blade chassis could save them space and possibly help the System i server(s) communicate with the x86 ones, especially if they’re System x.

When the i5/OS blade becomes available next month, look for IBM to recommend configurations to business partners that involve an overall blade server strategy that includes System i and rids users of older System i standalone hardware.

But there is another issue: Is the JS22 blade that i5/OS will run on too big for some customers? The answer may be yes, and software costs might end up being a deterrent. The JS22 is a two-socket blade that has four Power6 processing cores. That’s more horsepower than some System i applications may need, and thus some users might get stuck paying for a software licensing tier that’s over and above what they want.

In addition to that, the i5/OS blade is about 20% more expensive than either the equivalent AIX or Linux blade ($7,436 compared to $6,129) .

David Vasta, over at our sister blog at IT Knowledge Exchange, has a post there about how he overheard an ad on the radio for the System i Express server. Considering how one of the beefs from System i users is that IBM doesn’t market the platform enough, this is decent news.

Vasta said IBM should have thrown in the starting price — $8,000 — in the ad as well, to get Microsoft and Dell to “shake in their boots.” He also takes the opportunity to bash Windows Server, saying it’s basically just a big desktop computer.

Needless to say, it’s good to see that IBM is still actively selling the System i, seeing as it’s been pushing quite hard on all its other platforms (especially System p) in recent months.

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.

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.

In January, IBM introduced the System i VIP, a way for users in particular industries – book publishing or sanitation supply, for example — to get hooked on the midrange server platform.

IBM’s goal was to win partners in the program who would then go out and sell IBM hardware and software, along with the partners’ products, to bolster the System i base. With a release last week, IBM is saying the System i VIP program has been successful thus far.

The only problem with that statement is IBM isn’t saying exactly how successful. In the release, it only says the program has “significantly increased the number of new clients choosing the System i business computing platform.” No numbers. No count of how many new System i users IBM and partners have captured.

Mark Dupaquier, the general manager of IBM’s Business Systems unit, said the program’s success is based on understanding that small and medium businesses “identify themselves in the context of their industry and therefore seek industry-specific expertise.” The Business Systems division, you’ll remember, is the byproduct of IBM splitting up System i. Larger boxes are now sold within the company’s Power Systems division, while smaller System i servers are in the newly created Business Systems division.

Needless to say, the absence of concrete numbers has brought out the skeptics. IBM does do a decent job listing some anecdotal successes in the release, and I’m not sure how Big Blue would be able to count exactly how many new System i clients came on board specifically because of VIP. But some numbers would definitely help.