Power8 processors pack over twice the punch of their x86 counterparts when it comes to running financial applications. Those were the findings presented by IBM to the benchmarking organisation STAC earlier this month. The STAC Summit in London attracted banking tech experts from all over Europe who heard how a Power8-based system set new performance…

IBM’s announcement this month of SuperVessel, a free cloud for OpenPower research, was significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was made at the OpenPower Foundation Summit, held the week before last in China’s capital, Beijing. This, in itself, was important. Sales of IBM Power Systems all but dried up in China after Edward…

In the first article of a new regular series, Colin Spofford, treasurer of i-UG, reports on the UK midrange user group’s latest activities. On May 19, i-UG, the UK’s major user group for the IBM i platform, held our latest event in central London in the historic Royal Exchange Building. This was the first time…

IBM i solutions giant HelpSystems has acquired midrange security specialist SkyView Partners. SkyView is the fourth IBM i-focused security firm HelpSystems has bought in recent years. The Minnesota-based company took over American firms PowerTech and Bytware in 2008. It purchased Sheffield, UK-based Safestone Technologies in 2012. All the brands involved in these earlier deals live…

This month’s new products roll-call includes two new offerings from France and one from Switzerland. South Paris-based SystemObjects Corporation has launched Push4Servers, a new utility that sends mobile device notifications, text messages and emails to users directly from IBM i or Windows systems/apps. Push4Servers (pictured above) requires IBM i V6R1 or higher and comes in…

There’s only one conclusion that one can reach after reading PowerTech’s latest security survey: IBM i people just aren’t scared enough. The midrange security specialist has been issuing the results of its annual State of IBM i Security Study for 12 years. Its 2015 study reviewed data from 110 IBM i servers and partitions audited…

IBM has announced that SAP HANA will now run on Power 8 hardware on SuSE Linux. It has also launched two Power System Solution Editions specifically for running SAP’s in-memory BI database. The new Solution Editions for SAP HANA come in two configurations. The first is based on the S824 with 24 Power8 cores and…

Big Blue has broadened its Power Systems range with the introduction of a new E850 model. But while other recently introduced models like the E880 and E870 can run AIX, IBM i and Linux, the E850 will run AIX and Linux only, causing eyebrows to be raised. The peerless Timothy Prickett Morgan makes some very…

It was technical refresh time for our favourite operating system last week when Big Blue released IBM i 7.2 TR 2 and IBM i 7.1 TR 10. Key announcements included the introduction of the Python programming language, the availability of Java 8 and the introduction of JSON Store to DB2 (you can read IBM’s full…

UK Power i user group i-UG has announced the dates of its biggest conference of the year. International i-Power 2015 will take place at the Wyboston Lakes Executive Centre (pictured) in Wyboston, Bedfordshire, on September 9 and 10. PowerWire is media sponsor. Before that, on Tuesday May 19, i-UG will convene at major Power Systems…