IBM announcements - an overview

IBM made quite some interesting announcements this week. I'll just start by giving you a short overview, but I'm surely coming back to some of them in my next posts.

• DB2 10 goes beta as announced in 'IBM DB2 10 for z/OS launches beta program (ZP10-0015)'. As you can see the naming convention stays the same. The beta program starts on March 12, 2010. No idea when it will become generally available. If you want to know more about its functionalities, then you should take a look at Willie Favero's blog. He has a great post on DB2 10.
• It's also the time of year for the preview announcement of the next release of z/OS, so here we go : 'Preview: z/OS V1.12 - Heralding a new generation of smart operating systems (ZP10-0110)'. And apparently a new release of z/OS also means a new and enhanced release of z/OSMF : "z/OSMF V1.12 is planned to be expanded with the addition of z/OS Workload Manager Policy Editor functionality, enhancements to the already valuable Incident Log and Configuration Assistant for the z/OS Communications Server functions, and the ability to add non-z/OSMF application launch points and links".
  
• Here's one I like particulary because it's new for the System z community. IBM took over Diligent in 2008 because of Diligents de-duplication technology. Up to now the Protectier deduplication Gateway was only available for distributed systems. It's a virtual tape solution that emulates LTO tape drives and writes the data to an attached disk array. But, in the meantime it also de-duplicates the data which can lead up to a 'compression' factor of 25 times. Now this technology has also become available for System z. There are two announcements, one for the hardware and one for the software part. I'm definitely going to elaborate on these announcements in one of my future posts.
• A bit out of my league perhaps but we also had the announcement of the Power7 engine and some new models. The press release gives a good overview of this new announcement : 'IBM Unveils New POWER7 Systems To Manage Increasingly Data-Intensive Services'. I just have to mention this one as this will normally become the engine for a future generation DS8000.
• And before I forget it, we already had the announcement of GDPS V3.7 last week : 'IBM GDPS V3.7: Enterprise-wide infrastructure continuous availability and disaster recovery (ZS10-0013)'.
  

IBM's next Five in Five

At the beginning of 2007 IBM came up with 'Five innovations that could change your life over the next five years' (Healthcare Prognosis, Real-time speech translation, 3-D Internet, Micromanaging our environment and Mind reading phones). Last week IBM came with another round of five 'predictions' : it's "a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years. The list is based on market and societal trends expected to transform our lives, as well as emerging technologies from IBM’s Labs around the world that could make these innovations possible". The five technology innovations discussed this time are :

• It will be easy for you to be green and save money doing it
• The way you drive will be completely different
• You are what you eat, so you will know what you eat
• Your cell phone will be your wallet, your ticket broker, your concierge, your bank, your shopping buddy, and more
• Doctors will get enhanced “super-senses” to better diagnose and treat you

If you don't feel like reading the entire press announcement, I took the liberty of uploading the little video that's added towards to end of the announcement to Youtube.



That's how I also bumped into another video with a news flash on the first 'Five in Five'



Not all that mainframe related, but there's not much news for the moment and I'm really curious what will become true of all this.

IBM to acquire Cognos

When I google on 'IBM to acquire Cognos', the first link I get dates from July 17, 2006. It's an article in IT-Week from James Murray : 'Will IBM acquire Cognos ?' saying "IBM has a gaping hole in its portfolio that is crying out to be filled by a business intelligence specialist". According to him not SAS, Business Objects or Hyperion but "an IBM-Cognos merger could make a lot of sense".
Well, things have indeed been moving since. Oracle took over Hyperion Solutions in March and SAP acquired Business Objects last month. Now IBM and Cognos made the following announcement : 'IBM to Acquire Cognos to Accelerate Information on Demand Business Initiative'. A quote from the announcement :

"Cognos provides the only complete BI and performance management platform, fully integrated on an open-standards-based service oriented architecture (SOA), and has a strong history of supporting heterogeneous application environments, consistent with IBM’s approach. With Cognos, customers can turn data into actionable insight for coordinated, information-driven decision-making to improve overall performance. Cognos will also extend IBM’s reach further into the CFO office with powerful financial planning and consolidation capabilities.
(...)
Together, IBM and Cognos will expand IBM’s ability to provide customers with the right information they need when they need it, to optimize operational performance, and to quickly respond to changing market demands. The combination of IBM’s information management technology and Cognos will also help organizations discover new ways to use trusted information spread across their enterprises to identify new business opportunities and significantly reduce the expense and time required to address industry-specific business challenges".

There's a FAQ on the acquisition on the IBM page. More information on the Cognos products can be found on the Cognos products overview page.

IBM Press Room, DS8000 and AMP

Coming back for the last time on the DS8000 announcements, I still want to put in a quick word on the Press Announcement : "IBM Introduces New and Enhanced Enterprise Storage Products Delivering Consolidation, Simplification and Improved Performance". Just because the press announcement mentions an element that's not covered in the announcements themselves : Adaptive Multi-stream Pre-fetching (AMP).
It's described as "a breakthrough caching technology that can enable up to double the throughput and dramatically reduced processing time for tasks such as data backup, batch processing, business intelligence and streaming media". AMP will e.g. make a DB2 table scan from disk perform like it would be from cache. Apparently it's not in the announcements because it was already quietly introduced to the DS8000 earlier this year with a new microcode upgrade. If you want to find out more, on this page from the IBM Almaden Research Center, you'll find an article on AMP.

IBM and Second Life

A couple of weeks ago IBM published a press announcement about opening a Business Center in Second Life, where you would be able to go through the whole purchasing process up to the point where the contracts are signed. Are mainframers supposed to know what Second Life is ? Well, I’ve got two adolescent sons walking around the house and it’d been in the news a couple of times. So, until now, I was at least aware of its existence.

In short Second Life is a completely virtual world, which, as I came to find out, is really huge. People are leading – as the name suggests – a ‘second’ completely virtual ‘life’. And leading such a virtual life seems to be very attractive as about 6 million people are signed up in Second Life and there are usually some 30.000 people online. So, why not put up a virtual Branch Office of IBM.

But why did IBM put up a Business Center in a world I mainly associated with free time and gaming ? My mistake, I found out that lots of companies are having locations in Second Life and that IBM really has a vast representation over there. Name a lab, it’s there : Hursley, Boeblingen . . . Name a country : IBM Italy, IBM Benelux . . . it’s all there. So, IBM must have a solid belief that Second Life is really adding value to their business. And more than 200 IBMers are active in Second Life.

Of course I had to go and see for myself and perhaps meet with the IBM staff of this Center in person. So I made an account (MarcW Writer – you have to pick your lastname from a list) and I set off for my first virtual journey. Actually that wasn’t so difficult. The announcement gives the SLURL (Second Life URL) for this Business Center. You’re immediately teleported (hey, it’s a virtual world) to the entrance of the Business Center. I had some trouble finding my way at first, but after a while I arrived at the heart of the center. Indeed, some IBM people were present. I had a little chat with Takeshi Sautereau, who showed me around a bit and whose task it is to help clients, answer their questions, give them the necessary information . . . So say hello from me to Takeshi when you get over there. He complimented me on my blog, by the way. So even in virtual life, my reputation was already running ahead of me ;).

I went back a couple of times wandering through the Redbook library, a virtual museum, the meeting rooms and even some large conference rooms, but you cannot say it was very crowded at those places. I didn’t meet any Benelux people in the Benelux area. So, though I can see the potential of it all, I’m still puzzled at where this will lead to. I also talked to Maximiliano Ducatillon (IBM) and he pictured the center as an alternative means to meet customers. He will invite me to the next conferences because I really would like to see some more people over there. I’ll keep you informed.

What can I say, I’ll have another go at it, but for the moment I’m mostly confused and wondering whether ‘real’ clients with ‘real’ IBM contacts, will really find it a benefit to go and do business or even find information in this ‘virtual world’ ? But then again, it also took quite some time for the internet to get incorporated into business life.

I’m sure I will get back to this subject, when I’m virtually grown up – no pun intended ;), I think.

So, if you didn't get the message :
just register and go and take a look for yourself !
Any comments about experiences are welcome !

IBM Reports 2007 First-Quarter Results

Yesterday, IBM announced its first-quarter results of 2007. Not that I'm that particularly interested in all this financial wizardry, but I'm obviously curious at what's been said about System z.
Well, revenues for the Systems and Technology (S&T) segment went up by 2 percent. "S&T revenues from System z server products increased 12 percent compared with the year-ago period. Total delivery of System z computing power, which is measured in MIPS (millions of instructions per second), increased 9 percent".
If you are interested in more financial details, you can click through to this page where you can find comparative financial results added at the end of the press release.

IBM to acquire Softek

IBM seems to be on a roll in acquiring companies. Next on the list is Softek. The Softek site is very outspoken : "IBM + SOFTEK = The Ultimate Choice in Data Mobility". The press release at the IBM Press Room gives us the full detailed information. The main product of Softek is TDMF : "Softek's patented Transparent Data Migration Facility (TDMF) solution enables a simple, unified approach to the non-disruptive movement and management of data across storage vendor platforms and operating system environments, as part of an information technology (IT) infrastructure change. By using Softek's solutions, clients can improve their ability to migrate data while keeping data online and applications available for end users." Typical use : customer acquires new DASD bu cannot afford to have an outage. TDMF does a transparent move of all your data without the outage. I guess this acquisition also fits into an IBM strategy of offering more and more services instead of just products.
Another question that pops up concerning this acquisition : what will be the reaction of EMC who is also a long-term partner of Softek. EMC also uses LDMF which is an equivalent of TDMF. But where TDMF works on a volume level for a mainframe migration, LDMF operates at a dataset level.
Perhaps this is not such a spectacular acquisition, but still a very interesting one indeed.

IBM to acquire Consul

On the Consul site we read that "On December 5, 2006, IBM and Consul entered into a definitive agreement for IBM to acquire Consul". On the IBM site, you can find the entire press release.
Consul is a leading provider of compliance and security audit software that helps clients track, report and investigate non-compliant behavior, such as unauthorized activity by information technology administrators or other users. I know them best for their mainframe products like Consul/RACF but apparantly it's their cross site coverage that makes this company an asset to the IBM products. Or as we find on their site :
"Consul's 20 year history as the leader in audit and compliance software means you can rely on us for the most comprehensive solution available on the market. With the first and only solution for log management, privileged user monitoring and audit (PUMA™), and security audit and compliance reporting across the enterprise, from perimeter to network devices, to applications, databases, operating systems, and the mainframe, the Consul InSight Suite meets your needs to track, report on, and investigate non-compliant behavior.
Consul offers two distinct industry acclaimed product suites:"

IBM Earnings up again in 3Q2006

IBM announced its earnings for 3Q2006 and they made a really good quarter - especially in the mainframe branch. You'll find more detail on this page. You can read the press release or view the presentation on the subject. One quote : “Systems and Technology Group (S&TG) revenues totaled $5.5 billion for the quarter, up 10 percent. S&TG revenues from System z server products increased 25 percent compared with the year-ago period. Total delivery of System z computing power, which is measured in MIPS (millions of instructions per second), increased 16 percent.”

IBM's Five year march to Mainframe Simplification

z/OS 1.8 has of course lots of new features. When looking at features disappearing from this release there were some features lifted from 'msys for setup' and 'msys for operations' was even withdrawn. Enhancements for 'msys for setup' were planned and a completely new interface and infrastructure were promised for 'msys for operations' . . . for some future release.
Now IBM is shedding some light on this with their 04/10/2006 announcement on this subject. IBM will invest $100 million in the coming years "to enable technology administrators and computer programmers to more easily program, manage and administer a mainframe system -- as well as to increasingly automate the development and deployment of applications for the mainframe environment". Main areas include :
"1) Automated configuration checking -- to make it easier for information technology administrators and computer programmers to predict and avoid technical problems.
2) Modernizing the mainframe user interface -- including network configuration, systems management, and data center hardware configurationdesigned with both existing IT staff and the new generation of IT workers in mind.
3) Improving software asset management technologies -- to make it easier for users to control software costs and, as well, simplify and automate the acquisition of software services.
4) Modernizing the mainframe's development environment with visual tools that enable novices to quickly learn how to program for the mainframe."
For more detail : check out the announcement.