SoftLayer Acquisition

IBM is buying SoftLayer. Not sure how much they are paying. The goal is to beef up IBM's cloud computing offering. In fact, IBM is going to stand up a new division in the company to service cloud computing specifically. Heck. Might as well treat this as a new wholly owned subsidiary.

SoftLayer is known for hosting the cloud for customers. They can do a private cloud if need be. Apparently they already have a lot of customers.

Rational Upgrade

It is that time once again. Got to upgrade my Rational tool set. Funny. I heard a lot of tools are changing names. Or to be precise, some new tools shall replace older once in the next version of the Rational Suite. Another oddity is that not all tools are getting upgraded.

My tried and true apps are getting upgraded to version 8.0.0.5. This includes Clearcase and ClearQuest. Rational Rose, which I only seldomly used, is still staying at version 7.0.0.4. Not sure if this is due to IBM not having an upgrade, or my customer not buying it.

All I know is that I need to make sure my work is ready for the big upgrade. At least my toolset is staying the same. Seems like the testers have to get ready for some new programs that replace the ones they use that are being phased out. Let's hope this goes smoothly.

I have requested to manually control the upgrade on each of my machines. I get the executable to do the install. Somebody else must be taking care of the back end. It is most favorable that I am going to be in between tasks during the upgrade. It would suck if a delivery crossed the update dates.

IBM PureSystems

I was reading a trade press magazine. Saw an ad for IBM PureSystems. Had not heard that term before. Decided to browse over to IBM to figure out what was up. I started with the PureSystems brochure. Wow. This thing was full of buzzwords. Must come straight from the sales and/or marketing department. But what the heck are they really selling here?

PureSystems appears to be an umbrella over three subsystems:

1. IBM PureFlex System
2. IBM PureApplication System
3. IBM PureData System

Now the PureFlex appears to revolve around the hardware side of the house. You know - computers, storage, and networking. The main idea behind it is that you manage all of this with a single console. The goal is to improve IT costs. This is being offered as an infrastructure as a serivce.

Next is PureApplication. This seems to be the most nebulous of all. They mention that it is some sort of platform or framework. It allows you to define patterns. Yeah. I suspect it might actually refer to the software side of the house. This is offered as a platform as a service.

Finally there is PureData. This is a platform. Yep. You guessed it. This targets your big data needs. This is done via cloud based data management. It is sold via a platform as a service.

I get the feeling that you are supposed to choose one of these three, depending on your needs. Wouldn't you need all three though? Of course the brochure directs you to talk to IBM sales. I guess that answers what this is all about. It is some sort of sales channel. Sales as a service anyone?