Archive for July 2011
Happy Birthday IBM Selectric
You’ve probably seen some of IBM’s communications and advertising this year, on TV, print and the Web, highlighting the fact that this is IBM’s Centennial year.

The IBM Selectric Typewriter, introduced in 1961, was an instant hit and sold more than 13 million units before it was retired in 1986. It has most recently been featured in the hit TV show, "Mad Men."
That means the company is 100 years old.
That’s a long time in real years, an eternity in Internet years.
But the celebrations continue, throughout 2011. This month, we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of the IBM Selectric Typewriter, which you’ve probably seen most recently featured on the secretarys’ desks in the hit AMC show, “Mad Men.”
But I remember seeing Selectrics while growing up in north Texas, where my father owned a small insurance company, where many of his associates used the IBM Selectric as their everyday workhorse.
I marveled when I would watch that small, round steel ball with the letters superimposed on it move so quickly, turning itself at lightning speed to leave the imprint of one letter after another on the sheet of paper.
Of course, a few years later, when I was in college, it was the very same IBM Selectric model that I learned how to touch type on — typing class, one of the single most valuable college classes I ever took, I used to joke.
The Flying Golf Ball
The IBM Selectric was an instant sensation when it debuted on July 31, 1961, and it remained the typewriter found on most office desks until the brand was retired 25 years later, in 1986.
The Selectric had 2,800 parts, most designed from scratch, and was a major undertaking even for IBM, which had been in the typewriting business since the 1930s and already a market leader.
With its flying golf ball head, the Selectric marked a radical change from prior typewriter design, and took IBM seven years to work out the manufacturing and design challenges before it went on sale.
The Selectric was a game changer in several ways:
- Its unique “golf ball” head allowed typists’ fingers to fly across the keyboard at unprecedented speed. An expert typist could clock 90 words per minute versus 50 with a traditional electric typewriter.
- The golf ball moved across the page, making it the first typewriter to eliminate carriage return and reducing its footprint on office desks.
- Interchangeable golf balls equipped with different fonts, italics, scientific notations and other languages could easily be swapped in.
- With magnetic tape for storing characters added in 1964, the Selectric became the first (albeit analog) word-processor device.
From Selectric To System/360
The Selectric also formed the basis for early computer terminals and paved the way for keyboards to emerge as the primary way for people to interact with computers, as opposed to pressing buttons or levers.
A modified Selectric could be plugged into IBM’s System/360 computer, enabling engineers and researchers to interact with their computers in new ways.
“The Selectric typewriter, from its design to its functionality, was an innovation leader for its time and revolutionized the way people recorded information,” said Linda Sanford, Senior Vice President, Enterprise Transformation, IBM, who was a development engineer on the Selectric. “Nearly two decades before computers were introduced, the Selectric laid the foundation for word-processing applications that boosted efficiency and productivity, and it inspired many user-friendly features in computers that we take for granted today.”
The Selectric has been highlighted as one of IBM’s top 100 milestones in the company’s century-long history. You can learn more about it here.
You can also go here to learn more about the U.S. postage stamp being released featuring the IBM Selectric.
UPDATE: My colleague Delaney wrote his own remembrance of the Selectric. Be sure and watch the classic Selectric TV commercial he discovered on the YouTube!
Planets Aligned
Is it a coincidence that Apple releases Mac OS X Lion and the new MacBook Air models on the anniversary of the Eagle landing on the moon 42 years ago?
Perhaps…but if the timing were really well thought through, STS-135 Atlantis might have landed back on earth today as opposed to its scheduled landing tomorrow.
Pretty soon, we space nuts will have to look beyond the Space Shuttle for our orbital kicks.
In fact, I’m already looking beyond the Shuttle and into the Heavens, and to the increased focus on commercial space ventures.
Orbital Sciences Corporation announced today that the Dawn spacecraft, which the company built for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, successfully achieved orbit around the solar system’s move massive asteroid, Vesta, which resides in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and which is 1.7 billion-miles away.
It took Dawn four years to make it out to Vesta, and successfully entered its orbit last Friday. As its mission progresses over the next year, Dawn will descend to additional science orbits at 425 miles and then 125 miles above the asteroid’s surface, which is said to be the size of Arizona.
Godspeed to the Asteroid Mapper…it’s going to have to be the next best thing to a man (or woman) being there.
Back here on Earth, IBM shared some good news earlier today, awarding nearly $1 million in Smarter Planet grants to 11 organizations around the world.
Known as the IBM Centennial Grants, these are both monetary and in-kind awards up to U.S. $100,000 each which fund innovative projects in areas such as healthcare, energy, and food safety.
These grants fall under the auspices of IBM’s continued “Celebration of Service” as the company enters its second century of social engagement and of IBMers helping their communities work better.
By way of example, one award recipient, the Drishtee Foundation, i funding a Smart Rural Aggregation Platform which will help evolve Drishtee’s model villages into sustainable Smarter Villages in rural India.
The solution will help to aggregate critical services and products related with livelihood, agriculture and information services and making services accessible to farmers and village communities.
You can read more about IBM’s Celebration of Service here.
IBM 2Q 2011 Earnings: Revenue Up 12%, Net Income Up 11%
IBM’s earnings for second quarter 2011 just came across the wire.
Here’s the topline:
- Diluted EPS: GAAP: $3.00, up 15 percent; Operating (non-GAAP): $3.09, up 18 percent
- Revenue: $26.7 billion, up 12 percent, up 5 percent adjusting for currency
- Net income: GAAP: $3.7 billion, up 8 percent; Operating (non-GAAP): $3.8 billion, up 11 percent
- Pre-tax income: GAAP: $4.9 billion, up 7 percent; Operating (non-GAAP): $5.0 billion, up 10 percent
- Gross profit margin: GAAP: 46.4 percent, up 0.9 points
- Operating (non-GAAP): 46.8 percent, up 1.2 points
- Software revenue up 17 percent, 10 percent adjusting for currency
- Systems and Technology revenue up 17 percent, 12 percent adjusting for currency
- System z mainframe revenue up 61 percent; MIPS up 86 percent; Power Systems up 12 percent
- Services revenue up 10 percent, 2 percent adjusting for currency
- Services backlog of $144 billion, up $15 billion
- Growth markets revenue up 23 percent, 13 percent adjusting for currency
- Business analytics revenue up more than 20 percent in the first half
- Smarter Planet revenue up more than 50 percent in the first half
- Cloud revenue on track to double in 2011
- Full-year 2011 Operating (non-GAAP) EPS expectations raised to at least $13.25 from at least $13.15.
“In the second quarter our long-term strategic investments in the company’s growth initiatives again helped drive strong revenue performance,” said Samuel J. Palmisano, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer. “Hardware, software and services revenue grew at double digits, and we achieved strong profit and free cash flow growth.
“As IBM begins its second century, we continue a process of transformation, positioning the company to lead in the future and deliver higher value to our clients and our shareholders. Given our strong start to 2011, we are raising our full-year operating earnings per share expectations to at least $13.25.”
Cloud Expansion In Japan
Ah, it’s a happy day for me. Why, you ask?? Golf, of course!
The Open Championship kicked off at Royal St. George’s in Scotland, another of golf’s major tournaments.
In fact, it’s gonna be a very busy weekend, what with our rockin’ U.S. Women’s soccer team having taken out France in the semi-finals of the FIFA Women’s World Cup yesterday evening.
Nice match again, ladies. And good luck against Japan on Sunday!
On the topic of Japan, today in Tokyo IBM announced a broad expansion of its cloud computing services for customers there and in the Asia Pacific region.
The new IBM Cloud Data Center, along with a data center for LotusLive, IBM’s cloud collaboration service, will extend IBM’s cloud delivery network of cloud computing centers that serve in over 50 countries around the world.
To date, IBM has centers based in Singapore, Germany, Canada, and the United States; and 13 global cloud labs, of which seven are based in Asia Pacific – China, India, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Singapore.
The new IBM Cloud Data Center located in Makuhari, Japan delivers IBM’s SmartCloud enterprise-class services which include a broad spectrum of secure managed services, to run diverse workloads across multiple delivery methods both public and private.
LotusLive Expansion
In addition, IBM announced it will open a dedicated data center for LotusLive, IBM’s cloud-based collaboration services, in Japan. The data center, which will be available later this year, is designed to allow customers in Japan to more easily move to the cloud.
LotusLive offers integrated social collaboration tools that combine a company’s business social network with capabilities such as file storing and sharing, instant messaging, Web conferencing and activity management.
This secure integration allows users to share and edit information, host online meetings and manage activities easily inside and outside company boundaries.
The Japan data center is designed to help improve network performance and increase business opportunities for LotusLive users. The center will allow clients, who cannot take their data outside the country due to security and regulatory compliance, to work in a security-rich cloud environment.
You can learn more via the IBM Japan cloud computing site (Warning: It’s in Japanese!)
Go here for an English language site on IBM’s SmartCloud initiative.
Mumbai
My heart goes out to the citizens of Mumbai, India.
Once again, they are apparently under attack by terrorists, this time with three bomb blasts in three different locations around Mumbai, including Dadar, the Opera House, and the Zaveri Bazaar areas.
I’ve been attempting to follow the #mumbai and #mumbaiblasts streams on Twitter, but honestly, they’re moving by faster than what I saw with the Egypt protests in January, so it’s difficult to get much info there (at least on TweetDeck).
I’ve been following New Delhi TV (ndtv.com) and also the Times of India (timesofindia.com). CNN and MSNBC have also finally clued in.
Reports now have the first bomb going off at south Mumbai’s Zaveri Bazaar, near the Mumbadevi temple, and where there are also a number of jewelry stores.
The second was in a taxi in the Dadar area of Central Mumbai, and the third at the Opera House in south Mumbai, just after 7 pm.
The Times of India reports all three are busy commercial and residential areas, and were bustling with people and traffic during Mumbai’s evening peak hours when the explosions occurred.
NDTV is reporting Lashkar -e-Taiba may likely have been involved, as they were in 2008. AP reporting at least 8 dead and 70 injured. Sadly, those numbers could likely grow as more reports come in.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the good people of India.
New Big Iron: Introducing The zEnterprise 114
IBM introduced some new big iron earlier today.
The new server is the IBM zEnterprise 114 mainframe server and is geared towards mid-sized organizations looking to enjoy the benefits of a mainframe as the foundation for their data centers.
This box costs 25% less and offers up to 25% more performance than its predecessor, the System z10 BC server.
Clients utilizing this new server can consolidate workloads from 40 x86 processors running Oracle on to a new z114 with just three processors running Linux…that’s 40 down to 3.
Over a three year period, total costs for hardware, software, and support on the new z114 as compared to consolidated servers can be up to 80% less with similar savings on floor space and energy.
Workload Optimized, Scalable And Secure By Design
The z114 was also built with scalability in mind. Clients can start with smaller configurations and access additional capacity built into the server as needed without increasing the data center footprint or systems management complexity and cost.
The z114 is powered by up to 14 of the industry’s most sophisticated microprocessors, of which up to 10 can be configured as specialty engines. These specialty engines, the System z Application Assist Processor (zAAP), the System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP), and the Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL), are designed to integrate new Java, XML, and Linux applications and technologies with existing workloads, as well to optimize system resources and reduce costs on the mainframe.
By way of example, using a fully configured machine running Linux for System z, clients can create and maintain a Linux virtual server in the z114 for as little as $500 per year.
The z114 also offers up to an 18% performance improvement for processing traditional System z workloads over its predecessor the z10 BC, and up to an additional 25% improvement for microprocessor intensive workloads using compiler enhancements.
The z114 runs all the latest zEnterprise operating systems including the new z/OS V 1.13 announced today. This new version adds new software deployment and disk management capabilities.
It also offers enhanced autonomics and early error detection features as well as the latest encryption and compliance features extending the mainframe’s industry leading security capabilities.
Additional compliance and encryption features, the result of a multi-year effort from IBM Research, further enhance security with cryptography built into the DNA of System z, by designing hardware with processor and coprocessor based encryption capabilities.
Where It Fits
At a starting price of under $75,000 — IBM’s lowest ever price for a mainframe server — the zEnterprise 114 is an especially attractive option for emerging markets experiencing rapid growth in new services for banking, retail, mobile devices, government services and other areas.
These organizations are faced with ever-increasing torrents of data and want smarter computing systems that help them operate efficiently, better understand customer behavior and needs, optimize decisions in real time and reduce risk.
IBM also introduced new features that allow the zEnterprise System to integrate and manage workloads on additional platforms. New today is support for select System x blades within the zEnterprise System. These select System x blades can run Linux x86 applications unchanged, and in the future will be able to run Windows applications.
New Financing Options
IBM Global Financing offers attractive financing options for existing IBM clients looking to upgrade to a z114 as well as clients currently using select HP and Oracle servers.
For current System z clients, IBM Global Financing (IGF) can buy back older systems for cash and upgrade customers to the z114 on a Fair Market Value (FMV) lease, which offers a predictable monthly payment.
IGF will remove and recycle these older systems in compliance with environmental laws and regulations and pay clients the fair market value of HP and Oracle-Sun servers. IGF is also offering a 6 month deferral of any hardware, software, services or any combination for clients who wish to upgrade now, but pay later.
IGF is also offering a 0% financing for 12 months on any IBM Software, including IBM middleware for the z114 such as Tivoli, WebSphere, Rational, Lotus and Analytics products.
For additional information please check out this video or visit the IBM Systems website.