Author Archives: Marius

About Marius

Owner of Henriska Technology and Project Manager by profession.

IBM Software Live!

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Spend the whole of yesterday at an IBM Software Live! day presented by 2 of my American coleagues – Doug Spencer and Jeff Reynolds (Kelly, you probably know Jeff since he also originated from Rational)

As fairly new to IBM it was good to see the range of IBM software products and wow what a range .. Covered from Tivoli on the monitoring side, Lotus on the people side, Websphere on the middleware side, Rational on the development side and then Information Management on content/data side.

Also good to see IBM’s direction with Web 2.0 and products like Connections and Quickr.  And then the support for open standards and open source.

The venue was great (Mount Nelson hotel in Cape Town) and the food was great.  Oh and a customer of mine walked away with an Apple iPod Nano in a lucky draw. Good for you Simon. Yes, us IBMers were not allowed to throw our business cards into the bowl 🙂

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This realy shows my age … the world of IBM mainframes

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I just read an entry by Mark Cathcart called Looking back, Unix System Services, Linux et al.

I started my computing life on VM systems way way back, and the fact that I actually know all the acronyms and terms that Mark was using, say’s a lot. This trip down memory lane gave a very good insight into how IBM looked at Unix and then in the later years Linux on their big systems.  I still do not know whether I totally agree or like with the i, x, p and z Series names for IBM’s hardware.  I so much more liked it when it was called 360 Systems, 390’s, 9375’s etc and OS/390 or MVS, VM etc.

Every year I hear somebody say that the mainframe is dying but it just goes from strength to strength.  When it comes to reliability, scalability and pure cost/performance then nothing beats it … even if you throw a multi CPU clustered Intel or AMD machine at it.

When looking at how IBM implement and innovate around Linux, I am confident that in years to come Linux will play an integral role in helping business in optimizing their computing requirements. As an Open Source and Linux supporter, I will use these solutions more and more in my dealings with my customers and clients.

Lastly, I am so glad that the WIN32 API was never implemented and used in the IBM software stack.  Just imagine the situation IBM might have been in today …

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South Africans in Ireland for Lotusphere event

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See from Ed that some South Africans will attend a Lotusphere Comes to you event. Wonder who this South Africans are and hope they are going to take some notes so that they can bring the event also to us poor sods that have to stay behind here in South Africa.

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IBM SA delivers bumper year

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Yes I know this is mostly old news but it only hit the press here in South Africa yesterday.  It is good to see IBM South Africa doing so well. 

IBM SA had a record year, delivering a 20% rise in revenue for its 2006 financial year, says Mark Harris, IBM SA country GM.
Speaking at the annual IBM gala dinner for channel partners, Harris noted the year saw growth of 33% from the company’s Server and Technology Group, 30% from Business Consulting, 33% from its Software Group and 59% from its Services Group.

 
This contributes a bit to the $91.4billion revenue that IBM made during 2006.

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What is all this twittering that people are doing …

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I see more and more people twittering (is there a word like that, if not then I have just created it). Must I or must I not join the community of twitters (another new word?). Do I want the world to know what I do every freaking minute of my day? So if any of my readers have some advice and reasons why I should join the twittering community then let me know. Better still, if you think I should not join then also say so.

Collaboration: New from IBM

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A lot has been written and said about Notes 8, Lotus Connections and Quickr since announcement at Lotusphere 2007.  I like particularly what Bill Buchan wrote and I quote:

Notes – my long term partner – well. She’s been tucked, trimmed, lipo’d, exfoliated. A complete makeover. But she’s still the rather interesting person behind this new facade. Some new tricks, of course. But the old ones still work. The in-laws – IBM – well, they cant get enough of her. The twin sisters – Quickr, and Connections. No talk of the ugly cousin -Workplace -anymore.

and then Bill gets a stab into MS also — love it

Let me tell you – Quickr just makes Sharepoint look like an ugly sister. Ouch.

I have run the latest beta build of Notes 8 and must say I like what I see. Much more slicker and responsive and that for a beta build.  Cannot wait to get my hands on Connections and Quickr.

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Community Building

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Over the last couple of days you will notice 2 new things in the side bar and both is around community building.  The first, MyBlogLog, is to show who is visiting my blog and take an interest in my ramblings.  Obviously to see yourself listed there, you need to register at MyBlogLog.

The second is what is called a AutoRoll … it gives an indication of what visitors to my blog read on the Internet.  Again to be part of this, you need to register at AutoRoll.  This service is still in beta but I have already found some interesting commonalities between what I read and what my visitors read.

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