System iNetwork

With IBM playing musical chairs every 6 months the time will come where the System i has nowhere to sit. Is the intent to avoid being the last IBM executive left holding the i-hot potato?

Maybe Shearer and Dupaquier are quiting? Possible reasons are a.) being the top level exec of a failing platform is death to their career prospects. and/or b.) they finally realized the platform is going nowhere as long as IBM barely invests in i5/OS.

-Steve

[*Note From Chris: While it's possible that Shearer or Dupaquier would quit, I've heard nothing to that effect. Also, from what I know about IBM, the company does a pretty good job of retaining its executive talent and shuffling them around various parts of the business. Of course, they don't put out press releases when someone quits or gets laid off. One note: Former System i GM Tom Jarosh apparently was the architect of the latest reorg, and everyone reports to Zeitler, who is also a former AS/400 Division GM.]

If my memory serves me right, like the old song: “The thrill has gone baby� if I’m not mistaken it's performed by john lee hooker.
The AS/400 – i5 or whatever name is given to it, is desperately in need of a father or at least a foster parent or family, for the abuse this platform suffered since it turned twenty this year is amazing that it survived this far…

Another reorg. Whoopee. Soon we'll have another name change. IBM has so terribly bungled the handling of the System i, it would be news if they actually did something substantial.

RIP, System i. You're as good as dead, and you can thank IBM's mismanagement.

Sorry about Mark, I'm sure he did his utmost best to at least try to stabilize the ongoing decline of iSeries, but to no avail. But lets give Ross Mauri a warm welcome and hope he's the one to pull off the turnaround of the iSeries brand.

[*Note From Chris: I'm curious to which IBMers will visit COMMON in Nashville this spring. . . .]

"...Former System i GM Tom Jarosh apparently was the architect of the latest reorg, and everyone reports to Zeitler, who is also a former AS/400 Division GM.] ..."

Can we say Zeitler is the one responsible for the historic underpowering of the as400 and system i hardware? Maybe he is the one that should go. Many of the S&T lines of business appear vulnerable to the competition. As Intel based systems continue to improve, why purchase the system p? If system p sales decline, that spells doom for PowerPC. i5/OS would be a great vehicle to sell IBM hardware and software, if only Zeitler had not starved it for investment the last 15 years.

-Steve

"...But lets give Ross Mauri a warm welcome and hope he's the one to pull off the turnaround of the iSeries brand. ..."

I dont think any of the IBM execs have a clue of the many shortcomings the system suffers from in terms of programming and running modern applications. I code sql procedures on the system i. Many thousands of lines of sql code in the last few months alone.

A long running sql procedure bombed on me over the weekend. The system did not tell me which stmt in a 300+ line procedure was the one with an error. In CL I can LOGCLPGM(*YES) and can see the actual cl command that was executed and the stmt which failed. You get none of this great stuff when running sql procedures. It is difficult to debug sql procedures, you cant call them from CL when they have parameters, and the long, descriptive procedure name is not visible on the network from a client like crystal reports. And of course the system is so geared down slow that I am constantly making functionality vs performance tradeoffs.

SQL procedures are outstanding because they are portable to other platforms and are highly functional. IBM could sell a lot of S&T products if they only knew what they had and made the necessary improvements.

-Steve

Steve Richter wrote "Can we say Zeitler is the one responsible for the historic underpowering of the as400 and system i hardware?..."

Steve,

The underpowerment of iSeries is indeed world famous with IT managers. Many of them owning the former small boxes (models 170, 250, 270 from 3 years ago) with "mousepower" ranging from 100-300 CPW wouldn't like better then to throw them out, and, more important, their appetite for iSeries has gone so sour that many say it'll have to freeze in hell before buying a newer model.

Noticably in the new small box, model 515, is it has 3000 CPW. Oops, a sudden x20 power increase compared to earlier models! And no more choking of 5250 oltp processing. Did IBM heard something? Appearently yes, but still, has the buying public gone so sour that even these new boxes aren't easy to sell?

As usual, time will tell.

All this rhetoric and IBM bashing or more specifically DOA System i announcements are the same yearly whining. Every major firm re-organizes on a yearly basis or they don't stay in business. This dead crap is just pure nonsense.

And the last time I looked SQL error checking was the responsibility of the programmer not the machine. SQL has error checking, even global checks that can be used to validate operations. If your code is failing it's not IBM's fault nor their responsibility to fix it.

Any SQL database object I have ever developed had built in error-checking and return codes for operations that were checked and appropriate actions taken.

Poor programming practices by poor programmers cause hard to find bugs. In other words, bad architecture. IBM nor the i is not responsible for your errors or architecting poor performing solutions which occur endlessly in this new age where every yahoo thinks they're a programmer. Sure write thousands of lines of code, but who the hell cares if the thing actually works or better yet can be maintained or looks like a Saturday night spaghetti special. The System i, Java, Microsoft, Sun or anyone else thus far has not solved the bad engineering problem.

The System i IS a great machine and IS going to continue and DOES run thousands of Fortune 500 style businesses that have absolutely no plans on adding a bunch of Windoze servers to watch them fail miserably at the workloads. All the so-called engineers run around trying to fix the problem they themselves created and pointing at the machine and CHANTING - IT’S THE MACHINE, IT'S THE MACHINE, IT'S SLOW, IT'S SLOW ARE THE PROBLEM. Now having just fended off the idiot users, they all sit down to write their next masterpiece.

The Windoze rhetoric camp comes from a those programmers who by their limited experiences have left them to conclude that because Joes sandwich shop doesn’t really need a System i to run their business that no one does. Oh, and don’t let me forget that IBM managers meet secretly monthly to discuss how to make CHANGES to the business so they can CONTINUE to make BILLIONS in yearly revenues. OMG!!!

And they secretly meet in the “chip and bite� secret cult to discuss radical changes to all COMPUTERDOM and the evil chairman, Bill Gates finally rules the world. Okay now that’s out you guys can now tackle the starving masses problem – go forth and conquer.

Reasonably discussing the future of any system by reasonable individuals might be somewhat interesting but this System i is dead constant rhetoric by the Microsoft faithful is just getting to be comical.

So in order to inspire the Windoze faithful, please take the next message to heart – BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH.

Happy New Year!!!!!

SQL procedures are outstanding because they are portable to other platforms and are highly functional. IBM could sell a lot of S&T products if they only knew what they had and made the necessary improvements.....

IBM should take a look at the PL/SQL language from Oracle. They have advanced so much that the framework Oracle offers with PL/SQL covers the entire ILE RPG (batch) framework and more.

IBM is trying to fight back with the new SPL (Stored Procedure Language) facility.

I'm now convinced that IBM has done everything possible for the iSeries/System i and i5/OS. It is the ultimate box, but people buy computers for software. There is nothing more IBM can do than what they are currently doing about providing application software for the System i.

It quite frankly is not possible or desirable to advertise a computer and operating system. Again, people buy application software, and the computer it runs on. i5/OS continues to offer a more powerful base for that software, and IBM has made the right product moves for it. We have a stronger future than ever in my opinion now that IBM has addressed some shortcomings that have been pointed out.

One of the most important is the product offering formulas presented with the 515 and 525 Express systems. Price and performance are clearly presented, all capabilities included and available. Apache/Tomcat web serving, DB2 database, security, Java, PHP, and all Unix capabilty are built in and top of the line. Linux can be run in a concurrent partition. Any mixture of web, batch, and terminal can be run as needed. User licensing can also be added as needed. And System i scalability goes from server to the most powerful of mainframes.

And in addition to the Java and PHP languages, the integrated language environment of RPG, COBOL, and C++ continues to run everything written in those languages. Web and sockets software can run everything new and everything old, with all the capability to run every mix of application software faster and more securely than anyone else can.

You basically can't ask for a better system to run enterprise software than the IBM System i. There is more that we can do in leveraging the power of i5/OS in both commercial and open source software, but IBM has built the field of dreams, the system i, and it's up to the software to come.

rd

Reorgs, name changes, etc. They just don't seem to cut it. I've worked with this system since 1988, Mark Shearer was the best GM we had in my opinion. That doesn't mean that we got market results but as a GM he listened to the customer and acted on what he could act on. You could not ask for anyone better to help you as a customer.

Unforunately Zietler and Jarosh have not always proven to be the best advocates for our system. I'm not trying to be offensive I just think that they have been a part of the problem. In some cases the reorgs can make good sense - I just always fear that each one seems to unintentionally minimize the true capabilities of our system.

The previous post regarding software is rather correct. Over the years the available software has decreased. Lots of reasons - but if you mis-manage a market and fail to let a system compete on its strengths....eventually you will lose suppliers....and customers.

IMHO, organization changes will always be there. In fact, continuous changes in organizations' structures are inevitable and expected as the market is continuously moving. We have no control over what had happened, what is happening, and what will happen in IBM. What we can do is to engage the leaders of System i in IBM positively and constructively. We want our voices to be heard and we want System i to be a big shinning beep on the IBM's executive radar screen. COMMON can invite the new leaders of System i in IBM to the COMMON conferences and actively engage and positively energize them. We need these new System i leaders to be our voices in IBM and to compete for resources for System i development in IBM. COMMON has been a huge success for System i eco-system and I am sure the new System i leaders in IBM will be impressed with the enthusiasm and loyalty of System i customers, clients, and partners. Let's work together to move System i forward. As many have commented, System i is a good and tested machine, and it still has much life left in it. It is not yet time for System i to fade away.




Cheers,


Keng