Well, I haven’t been blogging from COMMON yet … but I just got out of the IBM Town Hall meeting a few minutes ago.
It was announced that the “System i” and “System p” were merging into a single, unified, platform called “Power”. The OS, originally named OS/400, then I5/OS, is now going to be called “IBM i”.
New hardware was announced that would be common between “i”, “aix”, and “linux” … all the same price, regardless of the OS that runs on it.
New marketing campaigns that will mention “i” set to be run. Starting with a full page ad in the local paper. I think they run a full page ad in the local paper at every conference. Let’s hope they live up to the promise and keep the marketing going.
They also mentioned more academic initiative stuff.
More later.
Gosh darn it David, you beat me to it – I was going to post on the announcement 🙂
[rant]
“The i stands alone” would be the term I would apply to this recent announcement. While I am excited to see they are continuing their dedication to the system, I (not i) still don’t know what to call the operating system. Mark Shearer had a slide up that said it was “i for Business”, and they still have “System i” all over the website so I don’t know what that is actually “pointing at” if you know what I mean. Is the real name of our operating system just the lower case letter “i”? Do the marketing powers at IBM not know how hard it is to find information on their site which inherrently means I head over to Google. HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO FIND INFORMATION ABOUT OUR FAVORITE SYSTEM WHEN IT’S NAME IS A SINGLE LOWERCASE LETTER!!!? For what it’s worth I sure am glad they stopped short of going with i6/OS, but just using the letter “i” – c’mon IBM.
Mark Shearer also said they consulted with business partners concerning their direction. I am curious to know if they conveyed this new name to them and asked for opines – I know mine would have been “add more letters”.
[/rant]
On a positive note, David, congrats on your award for distinguished service to the community. Much deserved.
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com