System iNetwork

"...I've noticed several frustrated, angry, confused, hurt, and nearly irate comments on Maxed Out lately ..."

who? me?

"...Take NSFDB2 for i5/OS, for example. How big a problem is this? Seriously? ..."

I think it has significance because it builds on the decision not to release DB2 9 ( viper ) in i5/OS. If you can't run IBM's flagship database on the i5, you cant run apps that use that database on the i5.

"...Then I'll make the attempt to put these questions and concerns in front of IBMers ..."

good luck and as a subscriber I appreciate the effort. Can you ask if the policy of pricing i5 hardware at a premium over identical p5 iron will be continued in the power6 blade systems? Will the blade hardware that runs i5/OS cost more than blade hardware that runs AIX?

another question. why not just spin i5/OS off as a standalone product in an independent company?

a question to systeminetwork industry reporters: are there any potential buyers of i5/OS?

-Steve

My $.02...
What's missing from System/OS: Make DB2/400 syntactically identical to a current version of DB2 on the rest of the platforms. Note that I'm not asking for an identical code base, just implement all the functions, with the same syntax. This would be especially helpful when trying to implement multiplatform solutions.

What could be better marketing: Encourage IBM'ers especially when co-presenting with a business partner to "talk-up" the System i especially when in a System i shop. If the CIO routinely hears other platforms mentioned first and System i as an "Oh, yeah", then the CIO will believe that System i won't get the support and development $$$.

Right: "...show me what you CAN'T do on System i!!!" (from a business perspective of course.) SOA?, Web Services?, XML?, Virtualization?, BI?, BPM? All available, and all in production!

"what's wrong or missing with IBM's approach to selling System i"

1. Stop changing the name. We are a longtime IBM midrange shop (System 3 model 15D, System 38, AS/400, iSeries, now System i) Everybody here still calls the system "the AS/400". I don't know why IBM has kept changing the name, and I don't really want to know. But I think it has hurt the perception of the system in the marketplace. When something bad happens to a brand or a product, what does the affected organization usually do? Change the name. They figure consumers won't notice, and they get to leave all the bad karma associated with the old name behind. People wonder if that's why IBM keeps changing our system's name. People still call IBM's zSeries systems mainframes, and always will. I believe people will continue to call our system AS/400 no matter what IBM does with the official name. I, for one, think that's OK. I don't see any negatives associated with the name AS/400.

2. It was reprinted in the October 1 issue of Computerworld, but everyone knows that, "The most powerful influences on CIO's IT preferences are the people who write for airline in-flight magazines." (Frank Hayes) So where are all the System i advertisements in those publications?

3. If IBM can get their message out about System i, minds can be changed. A CIO I know was persuaded to make a trip to the IBM Rochester briefing center, where he heard a presentation by Steve Dahl on the System i value proposition. He was very impressed by that briefing. His organization is now firmly placing its future IT plans on the System i bandwagon, and trusting IBM to take them to the right places. This person does not have a System i background, so you could almost call this a conversion. That's the kind of thing that happens when people find out about all the good things our system can do. IBM's challenge is how to get that message out to the people who make the decisions.

4. Inertia is a powerful thing. It takes far more energy to move an application off of a platform - for example: moving Notes on Wintel to System i - than it does to simply upgrade or enhance its current platform. In order to overcome that inertia, a powerful person has to step in and say that's the way it will be done. The Notes admins would rather just buy a bigger Intel box, because nothing changes for them. The only way IBM can help organizations overcome that inertia is to tell the System i story to the CIO's until they are blue in the face (sorry, couldn't help it) - and then tell it again.

1) DB2 on iSeries needs to have the exact same functionality or more then all the other DB2 products.

2) i5/OS needs to play Uni-code, ASCII, JAVA, Linux, and windows very very easily

3) iSeries hardware needs to be able to run windows inside the box (not an add-on card, but native on the power hardware or in a virtual machine running x86 code on top of power hardware

4) iSeries hardware needs to be able to run the Oracle red stack (on windows or Linux) running any flavor of the big ERP apps is critical

5) We need a $3000-$5000 box & software that allows a small business to run everything they need including development tools to support home business and garage sized shops.

6) iSeries hardware needs to be able to be a real time graphics game engine or grid node.

7) It is time for Power7 to come out early and blowing away the competition with mind boggling 128 or 256 bit screaming raw horse power. (To make an iSeries box an awesome virtualization machine)

8) i5/OS needs to appeal to the UNIX, Linux crowd maybe allowing more UNIX like commands, but make them easy and prompt able…

That's all I can think of for now...

Lot's of us "old timers" have been using the "Legacy" i-series / AS/400 for years, but kids in school wouldn't know one if it bit them in the nose... If we lose the attention of the undergraduates and graduates in colleges, then we might as well just hang it up... they all know "Micsoswift", "open sores", and "Enuchs" and "Lin-Enuchs" but none of them has even heard of the "i-what??" before ??? The only thing worse off is the general public... who could mostly all sooner find something on a map then tell you what an "i-what??" ( oops, I mean i-Series) is... All the "brilliant" marketing has done nothing but make the platform completely unrecognizeable... And then there's the... "Ah say, doesn't Apple make that???" comment... always one of my favorites... Thank goodness we've clearly "branded" this product... I was getting a little worried there for a moment.. Maybe it's time for another name change?? Oh, I forgot we did that..., I'm so sorry, I meant "System i", well now that we've really cleared things up... When will IBM get SERIOUS about marketing this platform constructively??? It is hard to believe it is anything other than a complete conspiracy to kill this platform... Why would you want to do this IBM???

Productivity is the bottom line. The purpose of a Business Machine is to make an employee more productive, not entertain them. I have been using the new HATS interface on a new server to do some simple remote writer management. Needless to say, it is more difficult to navigate than a traditional 5250 screen. As an example, I have lost the ability to enter options on multiple rows of the list. I cannot type an option; I must select an option from a drop down list.
Medium to large companies have many employees that need "heads down" data entry jobs. IBM has abandoned these companies by trying to make the System i a Windows replacement. They push it as an "all in one" solution with reduced maintenance as a selling point. Unfortunately, if there is one thing the System i cannot do or does not do as well as Windows, a company will deploy Windows and all of the reduced maintenance costs are out the window. (No pun intended.) Added to that is the complexity of making the two systems communicate.

The first thing IBM needs to do is sell the System i as a Transaction Server. "Legacy" IS NOT A BAD WORD. They need to improve interoperability with Windows. They could start by converting the system to ASCII. This would simplify file transfers.
If they want to do Windows type things, then implementation needs to be as simple as running an install program and following the prompts. I could go on and on, but that should get things started.

I've been working lately for a client that hasn't changed its core billing system dramatically in 17 years. While this could be a selling point for the i5's ability to keep valuable legacy systems running, it has become a laughing point at the company.

As I thought about the situation for several weeks, and have read many articles and commentaries on the topic. (See Is it Time for Free Format? where the discussion is about free format or not. While reading this, I realized that RPG is not the issue - as one writer put it "The users don't care about RPG!" ...) I came to the conclusion that we - the developers - are the only ones to blame for the current lack of i5 interest in the user community.

Think about it - when was the last time you saw a DOS developer writing a business application in MS-Basic? Probably about 17 years ago. When I compare that to how I write code today - in SEU for 5250 displays, I find that I am no different than anyone who would have foolishly stayed with MS-Basic.

IBM has done virtually everything to give us the tools we needed to upgrade our skills and stay on top of the development world. The only thing they didn't do was draw a line in the sand, and come out with an OS release (say around V3R7) that refused to allow you to write a new program using SEU or for 5250.

What's missing from System i? When IBM developed WDSc, did they develop it as web pages? Well, no, they didn't.

And so I keep asking, why is that IT people expect and require powerful desktop clients like Java or Windows but say that "users" only need web pages?

And by the way, those are the same users opting for other systems. Web page systems? Sometimes, but usually the client software is much more powerful.

I saw a demo of the System i Web Query enhancement to Query/400. Very well done. The interface looked Java level well done in fact. I went home and checked on the history of the product, and sure enough it is mostly a Java applet product.

So I would say what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If IT expects a powerful interface to do its work, why is it they expect others to not need just as powerful of an interface if not more?

I would say the ubiquitous Windows software used by them whenever possible answers that beyond question.

So what is lacking from the System i is a WDSc for our business users that we can communicate with in a standard way from our System i ILE programs, an interface even more powerful than our 5250 interface.

The browser is built in to Eclipse WDSc, it's not that a browser web page isn't useful. But it's just another tool in a complex desktop.

IBM should dot the i in integration and provide a system i desktop client that our business uses don't have to leave to use System i served data in a spreadsheet amidst complex arrangements of screen data.

We can either shoot for the bottom with lowest common denominator web pages, or we could dare to be great. We have the system to do it. IBM should dare to make a client interface worthy of the System i.

rd

I have lived and breathed the System i for the last 16 years. I believe that growth is a sign of life, and decay a sign of dying. As much as I hate to say it, the System i is in a state of decay and I can not see anything that would alter that fact. I now think that the best hope for the System i is in the legacy (pun intended) that it may pass on to future generations.

IBM is a big supporter of Linux, and Linux is a growing, living platform. The best future for the System i would be to take all the features that made it such a great platform, with such an amazingly loyal customer base, and move that same heart and soul into Linux.

After all, the underlying hardware is the same now. IBM proved that they could port Unix apps to the System i, so surely System i features and apps should be able to move the other way.

Maybe a little naive, but put Dr. Soltis and Mr. Torvalds and several others in the current respective teams into a room for a week or two and see what comes out of it.

It is too late to resurrect the System i, but it may be reborn.

I think that you help comments( you can read it from previous chapter):
// research RPG
- new object *FILE pf-htm with DDS (or without) for a WEB interface with RPG.
- Eliminating unreferenced RPG variables

The iSeries is one of the many best-kept secrets within IBM. IBM marketing strategy is that of word of mouth not realizing that most iSeries environments don't require a huge amount of support staff on hand to support such a system.

Cost is the second factor, yes you can argue that for what you get it's relatively fairly priced however once again IBM will "kill" i5/os as it done several year prior to OS2 ... just think of it if IBM reduced the price of OS2 in the days of dos and windows 3.1 we all would be using Warp2007 today....

In my opinion one of the weak points of the System i is its graphics capability for the conventional spooling printout and the conventional screen interfacing for the built applications.

For the spooling printout there must be a centralized WYSIWYG tool relieving the programmer from the tediousness of printer file DDS, AFP, PFS/400,...etc.

For the screen interfacing for the built applications there must a way to build GUI screens for applications built using native programming languages, i.e. RPG, COBOL,...etc., even if this needs a thin client to be installed on the client PCs.

Needless to mention the System i strong points :
- Legendary uptime
- Breadth / depth of its OS security functions.
- Easiness of hardware / software upgrade.

Hi Chris:

I think what the System i needs is a native graphical user interface. Seems to me it's the green-screen that immediately makes high-level decision makers brand it as 'old technology'.

I don't think the HATS, screen-scrapers, etc. ways of improving the look and feel remove the impression that System i is 'old' - the users think it's just 'disguising' something ancient.

I've seen System P unix servers with their not-so-great graphical interface but right away the bosses think it's 'latest technology'.

Not a top ten, but an RPG "like to have." It would be nice if IBM gave us more BIFs that performed some of the useful C functions, like qsort and bsearch. Yes, we can do that now, but most folks won't take the time (or aren't allowed to take the time) to learn these techniques, but would find them useful if they were easier to use.

At an IBM System i executive briefing in August, IBM announced that RPG was still a viable and current language and that it would continue to be a strategic part of their tool chest. Approximately a month later in an EGL (Enterprise Generation Language), IBM said that EGL produces JAVA or COBOL code. When I asked about RPG they said that RPG is no longer a strategic tool and further development of it would wane. To back up their claim, they are offering free significant online training for EGL. What am I to make of these mixed signals as I make plans to keep my developers' skills current?

It's really sad to see what ibm(small letters) has done to this great platform. "kids" today have no clue about the power and zero downtime of the i-series. The biggest problem is this, the i series runs circles around any other server, but like it said in an article I just read. "its the Green
Screen Stupid". 'Kids' relate the iseries to the old 'Pong Games'

So sad to see a platform like this die!!!

It seems like there is general agreement that it is the interface. The server has fabulous and legendary capabilities but the presentation is lacking - just like IBM marketing! There is probably a skunk-works project in Rochester to give the AS/400 a GUI but someone is keeping it bottled up. We freed RPG, now it is time to free the AS/400 GUI!

The challenge: in one simple sentence, answer the question “What is a System i?� in a way that makes sense to an otherwise IT-literate person who has never heard of our box. For example, if the question were “What is a System z?� you might you might respond, “the current version of the IBM mainframe.� To “What is a System p?� you might say, “The IBM UNIX box.� For System x, a good response would be, “the IBM WinTel platform.� None of these answers tell the whole story of the respective platforms by any means, but they do give our questioner some basic feel for what the box is about. I have been unable to come up with any one-sentence response to “What is a System i?� and that may be a major piece of our box’s marketing problem. So, tell me, in one short sentence, what is a System i?

Many here believe that the System i platform is seriously ill and is today in such a weakened state that it is beyond resuscitating.

If we take look at other platforms that are more succesfull then system i, we see that these platforms stick to their original roots or 'ecosystem' if you will and build further upon them to keep the current and prospect customers happy. Typical successfull ecosystems are "mainframe world", "windows world", "sap world", "oracle world" and the not-so-succesfull "system i world".

The system i world is seu, pdm, rpg, db2, clp, qry, the one storage principle. The system i world is NOT (I repeat NOT) windows, unix, linux, java, eclipse... this is a weak imitation of others platforms that would run better (and cheaper) on their home platforms.

But while for example the more than 15 year old Sap and Oracle worlds evolved and underwent the natural evolutionary step of VISUAL and OO extended languages with a modern marketing approach, the evolution of rpg and the rest of the system i world came basically to a halt -- in comparison to the competing platforms -- in the mid nineties. Ibm seems to have finaly realized this, and tries now in a panic and erratic way to regain its fleeding customer base, but all in vain. System i has lost the critical mass to ever resurrect imho, and I think a poll under most system i developers and decision makers will confirm this opinion. Sure it's brave to put up a fight, but, apart from saying "at least we tried", this is a losing battle, and Ibm knows this. The battle should have been fought 10 years ago. In conclusion, all I can say, as a developer, it would be wise to look for other horizons pronto!

If IBM were to spin the machine into a separate company, that company would literally kill IBM with it. IBM doesn't make money from the i5 because it practically runs itself. IBM makes most of its money from the services it provides to try to keep Windows systems running.

Ralph, I agree with you completely about trying to shove HTML pages down the users throats as a replacement for the green screen.

You should see the look on programmers faces when I suggest they use the same interface that they are trying to push on users. Would you like to do all your coding in a web browser?!?

Of course not, so why in the world would you expect users to "like" using a web page. For that matter, from an economic stand point the web page isn't efficient for the user either.

IBM actually has built a GUI light client that provides the central management features of web with the look and feel of a local application.

It is called Eclipse and WDSC is based on it. The new release of Notes is based on it. The new and free Office killer app Symphony is based on it. IBM, Google, and others keep talking about SAS and cloud computing. Do you see a trend here.

I see two paths to the future: 1) WEB 2.0 where all the on screen widgets are built into the browser providing the ability to build apps that feel local; 2)special clients like eclipse that provide a platform upon which to build centrally managed apps that feel like local apps.

IBM has eclipse as a GUI platform answer that runs on multiple OSs.

On the Web 2.0 front, Microsoft has WPF/E (also known as Silverlight) that will run on multiple OSs (eventually maybe sort of).

Adobe has Flash & Flex another Web 2.0 solution that runs in the browser. Both of these already exist and are installed in most browsers.

Along the Flash vein, several companies are building Web 2.0 type products on top of Flash. See Open Laslo (http://www.openlaszlo.org/front_page) and G.HO.ST (http://g.ho.st/). GHOST is more of a demonstration of what can be done with these tools than something you can code with.

The i5 (and community) is uniquely poised to support massive levels of functionality via such hosted architectures. Nobody really cares what the server is, as long as it is stable, scalable, and is economical to run. We have nearly 30 years of hosting experience in our OS. Nobody does it better or bigger.

The future awaits the i5 community.

What is required is for IBM to work with vendors (push them if necessary) to develop new and 21st century ERP applications and then actively MARKET and SELL them as part of a System i hardware solution.

Few random thoughts:

(i) Awareness: no one can buy something that s/he has not heard of before. So, academic initiative, and educating and exposing business students and business managers to System i are vital. System i needs to be a name that is familiar to CEOs, CIOs, and business executives. Strong marketing and powerful advertisement at the right time and right place – e.g., Wall Street Journal.

(ii) Leadership: a stable and influential System i leadership in IBM to make things happen and to move things forward. As a number of people have mentioned, there is much catch-up to do and that is impossible to be accomplished by constantly changing leadership or frequent reorganization.

(iii) Perception: no one wants to be branded as or perceived to be outdated or legacy. Similarly, System i should not be perceived to be a system of the past or from the past. It must be presented as a system for the future. No one wants to invest in the past.

(iv) Strategic Planning: come out with a strategic plan for System i and let the System i community knows the strategic plan and direction of System i. IBM and the System i community can then work together to achieve the goals for the next 3 or 5 years. System i has a group of very loyal, enthusiastic, and energetic partners, clients, and users. IBM should engage them and work with them to achieve great things.

Here are some thoughts:

1) WebFacing (specially WF), HATS, WDHT must be bundled with WDS/Client Access (back to IBM STG, not SWG!). Why? To protect IBM's System i customer base. Those tools help sell new machines and subsidiary products like portals. With new customers WDS/Client Access licenses bring money, though prices need to be checked and bundled with hardware.

Now with the unbelievable price no in-house-developers nor ISV's can use these products.
If IBM gives this, we, as developers and System i houses, can make our WF/HATS WDSc projects available to others too free of charge to support the platform. At least I would . . . with step-by-step instructions . . .

2) Number 1 gives time. Either there needs to be native *html-dspf or much better WF/Hats. Those products are not yet ready.

3) There is RPG. It developes. You can do every business operations with it. IBM developes it now, and will bring better xml-handlings etc. End of story.

4) *html-dspf or better WF/Hats are enriched with Java by developers. That extends RPG and brings necessary layer on top of RPG.

5) Portals are coming. Portals are now luxury products which customers are willing to buy. But we must be able to put applications in there and those are done with WF/HATS and need to be free first. These new trendy products are money makers for IBM but you need to be able to create something in there. Empty shells don't sell.

6) PHP and other new neat features. This is a great option, though there needs to be better 4Dummies -material. No 800-page redbooks. Just 5 pages how do you get started, some free packages how you test it and check it out. Nowadays there are many new products and you can't read 800 page redbooks and spend months with those. Time is money and you need to see possibilities quickly to know if it can be used somewhere or not.

7) DB2 needs to have same possibilities on System i than on other platforms. However, with legacy applications this is not so big deal and this doesn't protect old customer base so much but it can help selling new System i's.

8) Hardware prices. 515 is a nice idea. But it has to be more upgradable and the price in Europe needs to be cheaper. IBM, 7995 dollars is not 7995 euros.

9) New stuff like webquery. Again, great idea, but the product needs to have things like scheduled reports to customers, suppliers and so on in basic package. Companies want to buy it from IBM as a replacement for Query/400 and then it needs to replace not only Query/400 but also those CL's and programs which companies have made to extend use of Query/400. Like scheduling. The ideology that you go out and buyt it as extension from WebFocus is not good enough.

10) PDF and Office-documents integration. This is so important. IBM needs to create more API's etc. to enhance possibilities to create these PC files. WebQuery with schedule as base package would also help, but more API's to use from RPG and so are needed.

And big thanks to Chris and all other guys supporting System i and putting efforts in it. And also big thanks to all those IBMers in many European countries who have tried to explain IBM US why the fight against WDHT license is a matter of life and death for System i now.

For one application, we're in the need to work with ILE RPG and CGIDEV2. It's fast and easy to code. This can be a way to replace display files with HTML code. We use Dreamweaver for maintenance of the HTML code. That works fine. All the CGIDEV2 code must be integrated in to the i5/OS and a new editor has to combine functions of SDA and HTML editors like Dreamweaver. HTML should be handled as easy as display files in ILE RPG.

I was seeing all those wonderful far-sighted and visionary statements by members on the current hurdles facing System i. Add these to it:

1) The top decision makers (read CIO, CEO and all other C's) graduate from main stream and elite institutions like U of x(W,M,C ..), MIT, Cornell ... How many IBM system i academic initiatives here?

2) The user base is still holding on to RPG and COBOL language development tools. Any new technology is worth little if we still continue using these while IBM has optimised SQL several times and has almost made JAVA more native to System i than Sun would have (Remember JVM is integrated on the LIC level and Guess where we have the most difficulty? Finding young RPG/COBOL programmers while the best of RPG/COBOL minds are approaching 50)

3) System i and p are now inseperable twins according to IBM (POWER proc their mother). Any new System i technology will have to meet p requirement (..128 bit OS ???). They will converge and ultimately will be marketed under a single brand name.

4) More Windows server and SQL integration on System i. Imagine the possibilities in the SMB market.

5) GUI integration on the LIC level and the browser its interface.

6) IBM's own S/W product support on i5/OS is different (read it as indifferent) than on say AIX. Lotus, MQ (No LDAP support on i) to name a few.

7) A wild one - unrelated to system i - Offer OS/2 as an open free to download OS and see if corp America accepts it. I hear Lotus Symphony an unqualified success with 100,000 registrations for download within a few days of the free offering - A kind of check and balance to the MS world you know.

I am so grateful these suggestions are flowing in. There are some really focused points here.

Please let me highlight that critical to the turnaround, is a fully functional and price-competitive IDE. WDSc 7.0 still has a lot of loose ends.

Way beyond the dorky first form that pops up (and can be turned off) and the slow download of SEU/PDM members there is a lot to be done to match the depth of commitment that IBM's competitors have invested in their IDEs.

I think George Farr's comment (about WDSc7.0 AE), "you don't expect to get it all for 'free' do you?" was very, very bad PR. Another piece of bad PR came out when an engineer made a widely quoted, rather whinny, response to an editor's request about NSFDB2 for i5/OS. These gaffs come from what appears to be low morale in IBM. They have rarely made these many mistakes in such short order.

We need a Turnaround Czar, not further fragmentation. We do not need fits and starts or name-changes.

I am grateful for the following laser-clear summary from Keng Siau:

"(i) Awareness: no one can buy something that s/he has not heard of before. So, academic initiative, and educating and exposing business students and business managers to System-i are vital. System-i needs to be a name that is familiar to CEOs, CIOs, and business executives. 'Strong marketing and powerful advertisement at the right time and right place', writes the Wall Street Journal.

(ii) Leadership: a stable and influential System-i leadership in IBM to make things happen and to move things forward. As a number of people have mentioned, there is much catch-up to do and that is impossible to be accomplished by constantly changing leadership or frequent reorganization.

(iii) Perception: no one wants to be branded as or perceived to be outdated or legacy. Similarly, System-i should not be perceived to be a system of the past or from the past. It must be presented as a system for the future. No one wants to invest in the past.

(iv) Strategic Planning: come out with a strategic plan for System-i and let the System i community knows the strategic plan and direction of System i. IBM and the System i community can then work together to achieve the goals for the next 3 or 5 years. System i has a group of very loyal, enthusiastic, and energetic partners, clients, and users. IBM should engage them and work with them to achieve great things.

Posted by: Keng Siau at October 10, 2007 7:49 PM".

Also thank you Ralph for your input on WDSc and Web Pages.

I have one more suggestion: Buy RPG.NET from ASNA's successor. Turn over every stone to dispel the perception that there is poor "Fit and Finish" to System-i flagship tools such as Web-design and WDSc 7.0.

Make the system a System-i system. Give those of us, career-path, again. And Thank you Chris for inviting these comments. Much more is to come.

My suggestion to all Editors is, "please, no more 'Softball Interviews', please put them (IBM) on the spot!".

thanks,

John deCoville

Chris and all!

Please consider joining forces with the COMMON America's Advisory Council (CAAC). This group is responsible for taking requirements from the COMMON constituency (and others) and organizing and prioritizing in the pipeline for Rochester development. As a former member of this group I can attest to their effectiveness. This group has gotten the assist for some really big changes to the System i and i5/OS like the 515 and PHP.

This group falls under the guidance of Anne Lucas who is a long time COMMON volunteer and IBM midrange advocate and boasts some pretty strong players in the midrange community. She may be knocking on your door soon. IBM has a very strong working relationship with COMMON and the members of the CAAC. Wouldn't it be a great if we could leverage the voice you are getting here with the formal requirements process of the CAAC that IBM already considers and respects? My point is that there is already a pipeline there that works in the CAAC. Let's leverage what works and make the whole thing better.

The CAAC has been around for quite a while and has been looking for a way to break into a higher level of prominence. I think a partnership here would be fabulous.

My $.02!

Regards,

Mike

I think it is also important for us to stress that the concerns, issues, frustration, disappointment, etc. expressed by some of the System i community members are not the indications of hostility or animosity. Rather, it is the results of their affinity to System i.

We hope System i will do well. We want System i to do well. And we are willing to do our utmost to help IBM to make it happens.

The cost of an iSeries is ridiculous compared with Windows servers. We have to keep buying IBM midrange because all of our code is done in RPG.

IBM has done a poor job of keeping up in price with the Windows or Linux equivalents. There's free databases now, such as mysql, that do just as well as db2/400 database.

Unfortunately, IT directors are facing these issues head on and the folks left supporting the iSeries are the developers who use it, I seriously doubt IBM has any plans to compete with the midrange any more as the p-series servers have the same functionality (they can run DB2, you know) and the z-series is just a whoopin' machine.

Remember back when an as400 was much much faster than a PC? Now PCs are keeping up very very well with new technologies coming out every day to support them, but nothing new comes to the iSeries . . . well, not before it becomes a standard on PCs. How many of you are still using Query/400?

Keng Siau wrote: "We hope System i will do well. We want System i to do well. And we are willing to do our utmost to help IBM to make it happen."

While this is a nice dream, there is only a small percentage of the community who actually are doing ANYTHING, let alone their UTMOST to help the System i platform.

I agree that it is not "hostility or animosity", but it is ignorance and stubbornness. People want a "native GUI", yet they are available -- just not the ones ~they~ want. People won't call the System i anything but AS/400 -- because they don't like IBM changing the name -- or they just don't like the name.

A certain amount of complaining and pushing is always going to help a community. But at this time, it seems like most of the vocal part of the community is simply whining because they are being asked to change -- and just don't want to. Rather than being proactive and being engaged in the community, they sit behind their terminal and complain with their fingers.

There are so many things to DO to keep our platform alive, but few people DO. COMMON's CAAC, CEAC, etc.. iSociety. User groups. Where are the people? Where is the DOing?

It is beyond "time". Unless the community does get off its collective whining and DO something, there will be no System i.

"...It is beyond "time". Unless the community does get off its collective whining and DO something, there will be no System i. ..."

classic blame the victim talk. at my current account, running a 1200CPW i520, the warehouse calls operations about twice a week reporting the system is running too slow and they are falling behind on their work. Because the system is so bogged down, I have to write twice as much code as is actually needed in the sql based reporting project I am working on to achieve reasonable response time.

If IBM does kill the system as Trevor warns, I hope the execs have the decency to sell it instead of burying it.

-Steve

Over the last 20 years the System/38/AS/400/iSeries/i5 community has proven to be remarkably thrifty with their IT budgets. Their combination of frugality and common sense has ensured that their organizations usually get the best bang for their IT buck. I'm not sure that these are characteristics that endear them to IBM marketing.

System i and the i-dentity crisis.

Even Ibm seems to have difficulty in positioning this product, given the rather unclear advertising adds of lately.

The solution is to increase awareness with prospect and current businesses, students, developers, the Common community group (to "push" Ibm) and most importantly, ISV's. This suggestion, how well ment it is, is like trapping in an open door. Ibm knew that already.

But what is the identity of System i? Is it becoming blurry, since so many other platforms are offering the same services the System i excells in?

Take for example LPAR. Running multiple OS on the same box. What about blades mounted in a 19inch rack? This is a same sized box as System i. Each blade is like a drawer, few inches thick. You can mount any blade using almost any O/S in the rack, interconnect them with virtual i/o tru the common backplane - in fact you end up with an LPAR system that runs Windows, Linux, Unix, Sun Solaris all at once....

Take for example the scalability of System i. The same blade server is mounted with an array of Intel blades equiped with the Intel processor-of-the-month (i believe they are 64 bit 3GHZ quad core now). Windows, Oracle all have clustering software to make the hardware appear as 1 giant server (in one easy to manage rack enclosure) with enough power to match the largest System i at a fraction of the hardware cost.

So where does System i go from here?
What other opportunites has the System i to search for, to give it a new identity in the IT landscape?

Opinions welcome.

Personally, I think IBM is between a rock and a hard place. The industry is moving towards open systems and services, which IBM is all-too-willing to provide. The problem is that hard-core RPG shops won't buy them (just look at the bile and vitriol certain members of the community spew towards Java and now EGL). IBM is a for-profit business. The open systems model makes them more money because it can reach a larger customer base.

Honestly, if they wanted to improve the System i's prospects, what they need to do is invest in opening the system and making it the most cost-effective system for running applications based on open technology.

• RPG needs to become an open standard. Submit the syntax standard to ECMA and allow the compilers to target Java VMs or the Mono/.Net CLR.
• DB2 on the 400 needs to have native support for XML to keep it on par with the industry at large and DB2 in particular.
• Support Informix on the 400.
• Drop the proprietary iSeries Navigator framework and move all the functionality to Eclipse.
• Port Mono to the iSeries (or to the iSeries via the Java VM).
• Support Ruby and Python on the iSeries.
• Continue driving down the procurement cost of the platform. (Unfortunately this eats into revenue numbers.)

Some of the things I saw them do right in their announcements last week:

• The ILE web services server and client will allow exposing ILE programs and modules as services and enable easier integration. This will lower the cost to enabling "legacy" programs to operate in an SOA (making a rip-and-replace case more difficult to cost-justify).
• Supporting WebSphere ESB and Process Server on i5/OS is good because it enables those products to take advantage of the scalability of the platform.

All the points that have been made about our new System i are valid points of view, but again much of our problems of the viability and relavance of the System i can be attributed to our own technical community. This community has often abdicated the technical high ground within our organizations, by not envolving the iSeries (oh! excuse me I mean the System i) in new GUI based apps. Also, we as a technical community have failed on four fronts educational wise:

- Failed to Educate ourselves

- Failed to Educate Management

- Failed to Educate the next generation of the System i technical Community

- Failed to Educate & Inform Big Blue (IBM) vociferously what those educational requirements are.

Lastly, IBM has failed us by not keeping current and relavant the educational offerings it has for the iSeries Community. (darn I did it again)

Time for a poll!

Target public for this poll are System i developers only, whether they are working as internal employees or as a contractor.

The subject is: I believe that....

* the System i is going to stay for ever, at least much more than 10 years

* the System i is going to slowly die in say 10 years but I'm still going to fight for it, I'll warn IBM and stay current with System i new technologies

* the System i is going to slowly die in say 10 years and I'm not interested, not in Java, Eclipse or everything else

* the System i is going to die much sooner. I act upon it by studying other platforms and development environments to find a job there.

Readers should "take a look" at Looksoftware. See www.looksoftware.com - it is the easiest to use, rapid "transformation tool" for green screen apps on the market. It gives you GUIs in no time flat, allows you to reuse your existing RPGIII/IV/ILE and Cobol code without change, allows integration with the desktop and other apps/DBs (Wintel/SQL, Unix/Oracle etc) and allows straightforward SOA compliant web services to be rapidly produced from your green screen apps.
An unabashed "plug", check it out!!!

All good points, I'll try to make these brief.

1) pSeries/System p and iSeries/System i to confusing and competing. AS/400, iSeries, System i5, i5/OS legendary uptime, reliability. Now with PHP and other addons, end p and i series competition by #2 below.

2) make one box, (if pSeries runs Linux/AIX natively with higher performance use it for LPAR for these workloads) multi-cpu running i5/OS, Linux, AIX. Market this minitower/rack like never before (leave Legacy out, state in marketing runs all your current applications, and those you want to develop! Including AIX, Linux, PHP, etc! Legendary uptime/reliability, etc! Security!)

3) Don't confuse by changing names every few years, promote in aviation publications (airline passengers) business magazines, etc).

4) While OS/2 was good (I've seen it mentioned here a few times) and corporate America was using it, until they were not sure if it would last, it also required more maintenance. It would require more development to get OS/2 current.

I saw in a public library the new at the time (1996) p-series than went down as library (non-I.T.) personnel did not know how to backup hard disk files/data.

With many present iSeries/System i users in use with governments, etc, the combined System i/System p box could continue running present applications, develop new ones, and allow current I.T. staff to professionally operate program same, saving investment in migrating to different platforms.