IBM i & AIX

Look for an announcement today, that IBM I will be discontinued and merged into AIX. With the addition of VIOS a few years back, IBM stated that there was no reason to have two operating systems on the Power platform, and instead had been using VIOS to host both AIX and IBM i. In the first generation, of the convergence, IBM I won't have any additional support for the hardware and will have to run on top of VIOS. Since VIOS can attach to virtually everything, it makes sense to leverage this hardware investment, and not develop any additional hardware driver support for IBM i. They said this will last for 2 years, at which time, IBM I will go away entirely, and AIX will be the only operating system left.

I heard they were doing this for just one reason, which was to increase their market share of Power Systems as they compete against SUN/Orcale. With the new Oracle chip that has come out, they (IBM) are concerned not about the speed of the clip which IBM states they can firmly beat in all CPU testing, but they want to increase the number of AIX Licenses. They figure, what better way than to merge their two primary operating systems into one, to increase the total. Of course, we all know the huge amounts of revenue that IBM derives from IBM I, so it is a little surprising. In addition, in a related announcement, Oracle had decided to withdraw it's named database, and replace all Oracle databases with IBM DB2, but wanted to make sure that all their customer's would have to download DB2 from Passport Disadvantage to complete the transition. Also announced today, that IBM would be closing down all its manufacturing and support in China, and moving them back to Rochester where they belong. You can find out more details on all 3 stories by going to www.itechsol.com<http://www.itechsol.com> .....

Remember what day it is today. :) Happy 4/1/2013.

Pete

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Pete Massiello