IBM made a number of new Power Systems announcements on October 9 including doubled processor core counts for 520s and 550s running i OS and a new addition to the range in the form of the model 560.

Although increasing the cores to four on the 520 and eight on the 550 may look like bringing Power i up to speed with AIX-driven Power Systems, it seems that the hardware was always the same, it just took a while to officially say so. The announcement merely brings the 520 and 550 into line with the 570 which was "unified" in April, says IBM's UK and Ireland i product manager, Nigel Adams.

"The reason why we didn’t do it all then was, to be blunt, there’s an awful lot of changes that need to be made in configuring and ordering and manufacturing systems," he explains. "We got it done for the 570 by then and the job was too big to get it done in April for the lower-end systems."

Big Blue may be coy about the success or otherwise of subsuming the System i into its new Power Systems range but the AIX side of business appears to be booming.

IBM reported revenue increases for the System i's AIX-driven counterpart, the System p, for every quarter last year as well as the first quarter of 2008. Converged Power System sales, reported as up by 29%, looked more than healthy in this year's second quarter figures.

So what explains the enduring appeal of AIX? "I think the reason it’s so popular, fundamentally, is IBM’s hardware story," says Chris Scoffield, IBM specialist at Slough-headquartered major reseller Logicalis.

"The Power platform is such a strong piece of hardware and I think without that AIX wouldn’t be anywhere near as strong a proposition as it is at the moment. If you look at our competitors and the hardware offerings that they have in terms of scalability, in terms of performance, in terms of reliability; Power, it just wins hands down."

Given the parlous state of the world economy, firms could be forgiven for letting Green IT slip swiftly down their priority lists. But a new report from IDC highlights how energy inefficiency in server rooms and datacentres can directly impact profitability.

The analyst's research shows that the amount of energy required by servers and datacenters in Europe is climbing at a worrying speed and grew by more than 13% between 2006 and 2007. In 2007, servers in Western Europe consumed more than 16.3TWh -- almost twice the amount of electricity needed every year to power all street lighting and traffic signals in the UK.

Business Computer Design (BCD) has released Presto, a new 5250 green screen application modernisation tool that creates a browser interface over RPG, Cobol and menu applications. UK and Ireland distributor is SoftLanding Europe.

Presto includes an interactive development environment for customising web-enabled screens by adding images, graphs, links, Google Maps, drop-down boxes, web services, AJAX calls and viewing data from other systems and platforms. BCD stresses that 5250 applications are deployed to the web with no changes to RPG, Cobol, or DDS source code and without the need to recompile any programs.