Steady on now. Is this just more high-faluting "vendor speak" or are there good reasons for IBM to be putting such a large investment into the several company acquisitions as well as the rollout of a raft of hardware, software and services that are behind this grand move?

It's very difficult to grasp the intention and scope of this blast of announcements just by reading the IBM announcement letters, so I've arranged something better for you.

He oversees an extensive portfolio of solutions that combine hardware, software and IBM services to help IBM customers simplify, better manage and do more with their existing infrastructures. As part of this, he is responsible for IBM's virtualization, grid and platform management offerings. Read more about Rich here.

I asked Rich to explain the rationale for the move, and to put into perspective for us whether the announcements are only of significance to large enterprises, what's meant by de-duplication of data, whether the oft-quoted claim that "the mainframe is dead" holds true, if there's still life in magnetic tape as a storage medium, and various other related matters.

Click here to listen to this iTWire podcast (or right click and select "Save Target As..." to download the MP3 file). File 17 MB, duration approximately 18 minutes.