Domino Diva

 It's official, at the COMMON conference last week, Mark Shearer and Ross Mauri announced the new IBM Power Systems.  Both the System i and System p have shared the same hardware for a number of years.  What's great about this announcement is what Ross Mauri explained to the COMMON attendees at the IBM Town Hall session last Wednesday morning.  Ross Mauri is the General Manager for the Power Systems Division at IBM.

The big news Mr. Mauri shared with the crowd is that there will no longer be separate pricing for System i and System p hardware.  Wtih the new Power Systems announcement, the price i customers will pay will be same price p customers will pay for the hardware.  This announcement brought a loud applause from the crowd, as i customers have traditionally paid more for memory, disk, and other hardware components than p customers. 

I think this announcement is a very good thing for the System i.  Not only is there pricing equivalency between the hardware platforms, but now when IBM Power Systems is advertised, i will also be advertised.  This is something we have needed for a long, long time, more advertising.  Things are definitely looking up for the platform we now know as the former System i !!