The Lastest Foolishness from the Grapevine -- MIDRANGE-L

New OS Plan for System i To Cut IT Environmental Costs 


by Grimm
<http://www.systeminetwork.com/artarchive/index.cfm?fuseaction=ListArticlesB
yAuthor&authorID=50043>  N. Barrett , Products Editor at Large 

March 29, 2007 - (ROCHESTER, MN) Industry analysts were stunned today by a
new plan from IBM to replace its i5/OS operating system with a new version
of Linux called "Lennox." The announcement flies in the face of previous IBM
statements that the continuous rebranding of the System i and its components
was going to abate for a while at least.

"The System i market is used to this sort of thing," commented Harley
Credible, a spokesperson for IBM's marketing arm, "and we have the right to
change our product nomenclature any time we like. People who can't deal with
it can just go buy a VAX and see what that gets them."

Seeking to capitalize on Linux's popularity while still giving the new OS a
twist that's all IBM's own, the Lennox V1R1M0 will include some features
never before seen in any computer-platform OS.

Headlining the innovations is an autonomics feature called the Data Activity
Virtual Evaluator (DAVE), a machine intelligence that will monitor and
adjust system activity and workloads on the fly. So complete will this
oversight feature be that IBM is hoping to lure new buyers to the platform
by essentially promising that the feature will do away with the need for
nearly all System i operations personnel. This headline feature will also be
the basis of a new advertising campaign based on the theme of "Just Ask for
DAVE," a marketing slogan Credible characterized as "fresh and exciting."

What may truly be exciting to IT departments is the large array of built-in
heating and cooling features that the new OS will offer. On the heating
side, Lennox will harness and channel the normal heat output of the System i
into an optional set of ductwork said to deliver up to 100,000 BTUs worth of
warmth - all of which the System i produces anyway. This will make the
System i a "green solution," Credible claims, noting that IBM is considering
asking Al Gore for an endorsement.

On the cooling side, the installation of a few small, "multiposition blower
coils" will enable cooled-air output at the flip of a switch, raising the
possibility that IT departments will no longer need air-conditioned rooms in
which to house System i machines because Lennox will provide the air
conditioning automatically. Such a reduction in overhead expenses is sure to
intrigue many. It will enable the installation of the System i in places
without environmental controls such as someone's garage, a back-to-the-roots
computing possibility that IBM insiders are currently calling the "Shack Out
Back" concept.

Rounding out Lennox's array of groundbreaking features is a large number of
filters built in to the OS. The principal ones mentioned by Credible include
filters for e-mail spam, computer viruses, and cat dander.

"They've found cat dander on the space station, you know, and they certainly
haven't been sending any cats up on the space shuttle," Credible barked in
response to questions about the latter. "If it's building up up there, that
stuff must be stacking up on hard drives worldwide something fierce. IBM's
stepping up to save its customers from this insidious threat. That's one of
the reasons we're calling Lennox a 'sweeping change!'"

Noticing the odd coincidence of the new OS's name matching the name of IBM's
vice president for marketing for the System i, Elaine Lennox, this reporter
followed up with a representative of Lennox's office, who was unwilling to
comment on the record with any official statement about the new OS. However,
an anonymous group spokesperson interviewed while she was on a high-speed
jog from her office building exit to her car in the parking lot was recorded
as saying, "She has nothing to do with this! Now get away from me, you
vulture!"