For those of you following this blog, you have probably put it together that I am in fact a long time Pittsburgh Steelers fan. And just for the record, growing up in NY in the 1970’s as a loud-mouth Pittsburgh Steelers fan was not an easy thing. People ask me why I became a Steelers fan and I usually start rattling off the names – Lambert, Ham, Blount, Greene, Webster, Bleier, but in the end it was really the way the Steelers did their talking on the field they made me put up with the constant badgering by want to be Jets and Giants fans. I idolized guys like Dick Butkus and Ray Nitschke both in the way they played the game but also the way they carried themselves on and off the field. Could you imagine TO, Chad Johnson or Tony Romo pulling their antics with Vince Lombardi or Chuck Noll as their coach? To say the game has changed since warriors like Chuck Bednarick or Jim Taylor played would be the understatement of the year.

I guess the one thing that irks me most is seeing a player celebrate a basic play when his team is down 20 points with 2 minutes to play or if he makes a tackle 35 yards down the field. The saying “there is no I in TEAM” does not apply for the majority of the NFL. Football is a team sport and those that succeed are usually those that work together for the better good of the whole. Likewise in business, companies that deliver value through strong partnership are generally those that are most successful. Nowhere is this truer than in the technology market where value is often generated only through the combination or partnership of hardware, software and services.

With our upcoming launch of "Shanghai," we’re seeing an incredible display of teamwork in delivering stable x86 server platforms. As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, our OEM customers were able to quickly validate their platforms and actually pull their launches in. Feedback I’ve received is that they’ve found Shanghai to be an easy platform to bring to market due to the silicon stability and minimal modifications. We had teams of people dedicated to working with each of our OEMs and thanks to this teamwork you can expect to see Shanghai servers in the market very soon. Similarly, we worked in lock-step with our infrastructure partners. Thanks to this cooperation, our channel partners worldwide will be able to offer customized Shanghai platforms.

Our processors are compatible with a wide range of versions of operating systems, and things will be no different with Shanghai. We continued our close technology partnership with the likes of Microsoft, Oracle, Red Hat, SAP and SuSe. This means that customers can expect to find immediate support for Shanghai in all of the leading enterprise applications.

Now for my picks. While it is tempting to blame my 13 year old son for missing both picks last week, I will take full responsibility myself – although Ryan is running a few extra sprints at practice this week to make it up to all the loyal readers This week I am pulling out the big guns and having my 15 year old son Tanner making the picks. Tanner plays halfback and linebacker on his high school team and is truly a throwback to the days of Butkus and Nitschke.

Shoe-In = Cards crushing the Niners

Upset = Eagles over the Giants in a close game

Insight = Closer collaboration between hardware and OS suppliers on RAS feature will accelerate the penetration of x86 into the traditionally RISC/Unix mid-range server space