System iNetwork

The army of Sysadmins. I've seen Unix shops and they have tons of System Administrators because the O/S is that complex. With IBM i you don't need an army to run the system.

PC Viruses. The IBM i i5/OS operating system can not be infected with a PC virus. The object based architecture provides the high level of system integrity and security.

You do have to apply a multitude of security patchs and recycle the server because something is not working. This gets lost in the true cost of ownership (TCO).

No lame Seinfeld commercials?

Oops, I guess even Microsoft figured that one out!

Storage management. IBM i utilizes Single Level Storage. All storage memory and disk are managed by the system.

DBA? anyone?

Manage storage ? volumes ? C: D: E:.... ? You don't "need" to do that. Buy an "i" !!

Buffer overflow exploits.

Object based deployment. Just deploy the bit that was changed - not the entire application.

You don't have to repeatedly re-boot the iSeries. On the iSeries, if an application has a problem it sends a polite message to QSYSOPR or even better it handles itself, vs. the NT environment where it just conveniently brings an entire company to it's knees until someone re-boots the server (again, and again, and again). Hmmm "boot", "NT Server", "boot a NT Server" (as in kick it around), sounds like a good time to me.

VISTA.

Along with failing devices, incompatible drivers, a bug-filled OS, and a fee to “downgrade” back to XP that worked better (after years of patches).

We don't have to reload the software every six months because the OS is unstable.

Ease of operating system upgrades on the IBM i.

Anybody out there ever tried to update the OS on a Windows Server? You better also have the updates and/or newer releases for SQL Server, any web middleware you may be using, the backup software you rely on, etc. Upgrade the OS on an IBM i and you also upgrade every other critical piece of software on the server at the same time like the database, middleware, backup software, language compilers, etc.

Let us all not forget that the "i" in "IBM i" stands for "integrated". An application server, a web server, a database server, all working together harmoniously as one and deeply integarted with each other, therein lies the true power of "i".

Are we going to have fun with this one!

How about Hmmmmm, where do we start first:

1. When you purchase i software you don't have to purchase all your software again each time you upgrade a release.

2. IBM guarantee's your software and Hardware investment until a defined date at least a couple years into the future.

3. IBM as been into virtual machines far longer than VMware and the PC people could even spell VIRTUAL MACHINES. We the people that run IBM machines have a far better grasp of problems associated with running virtual a machine environment. For example: I get PC Kids running around all day trying to load balance processors and memory and they don't have a clue that it takes a small percentage of these resources to run the system. They spend hours attempting to account for every little percentage point and come to the wrong conclusion. Sorry guys but your values will never be exact.

4. Security is built into the micro code and can't be by passed if setup properly. Security on the i is not an after thought; its included in your base purchase.

5. PC Kids talk about server consolidation like its new and they thought of it first. Wakeup Kids, you were in diapers when IBM was doing it.

6. The i can do GUI as well but why when people like Mirco-soft are moving to a command interface in version 2008. Did it really that them that long to realize IBM was right staying with a command line interface?

Is Micro Soft still running on Iseries systems? Curious - I wouldn't trust my Business on a Mirosoft system either if I was Bill Gates.

7. SNA Traffic - Its the most secure traffic that exists on any network because its one way traffic - even IBM missed the boat when they said they will not be supporting it.

8. Come back to load balancing for a moment - has anyone ever added up the man-hours that go into load balancing or performance analysis on a virtual machine.... I just laugh at these people because they are mising the point of a virtual machine. With a virtual machine all you need to do is throw a few pieces of Hardware at it and your performance problems are over; unless of course the people that designed the application were total morons and the people that allowed the application to go into production were not much better. I see company's actually paying $70 - $90 thousand dollars a year to people to perform performance analysis on a virtual machine. These people that pay this amount of money don't have any idea of what an i or for that matter what any vitual machine is or how much hardware can be purchased for this amount of money they are wasting on people. It just baffles me when I listen to green people talk about virtual machines. If they really what to spend money there are tons of software company's that would love to take the Businesses money for the purchase of their performance software tools and they will be far less they paying 1 person $70 or $80 thousand per year.

9. Running low on Disk space - Purchase more in the SAN world. In the i world we believe disk space and system resources should be controlled for the Business and should have a dollar amount associated with it take so it can be related to the Business area.

10. Capacity ondemand - need I say more.

11. Guarantee your ERP will be supported for years down the road. IBM and the OS/400 still can run and support your ERP that was written back in 1988. Where would your ERP and your company be today if it started Micro-Soft. Hell, can you even trust Micro-soft with your Business today? Will Micro-Soft give you a stick in the sand and tell you how long your ERP will be supported? You get and have had that guarantee with the OS/400 and continue to get it with the i.

I realize some of the concepts above are more people related than the actually i but these are the concepts we learnt from the many years of working with the OS/400(iSeries, i5/OS, i.

One thing I can say for sure - its a numbers game we are losing because every company has at least 4 PC people to every 1 iSeries person and only 1 I.T budget. The only way we are ever going to sell total cost of ownership is if a smart person in finance decides they want the I.T department to break down costs by computer system.

My two cents for whatever its worth.

Abstraction from the underlying
processor architecture:
In the i world, we don't have to worry about application rewrites and/or recompiles when IBM launches a new generation of processors.

I remember back then around 1995, when the shop I worked at moved from AS/400 CISC to RISC: we just backed the system up, unplugged the old box, installed the new one and restored onto it. Next morning, when I user chose a menu option, he/she saw a nice message for a couple of seconds (a message I consider one of the biggest strengths of the i compared to other platforms): "Converting to 64-bit RISC".

When the UNIX and Windows worlds get
to that level of operating system sophistication and customer investment protection, give me a call.

All this is very nice, but as time passes the machine has a growing share in a shrinking market, and this year the AS/400 turned twenty, the name may have changed yet little was done to reveille the secret to the world that this is one hell of a platform to run applications on…

System is locked up, REBOOT! Never know why, just reboot... Stop everybody from working and have no explanation as to why, and act like this is just what computers are supposed to do! Did you try rebooting? It's not like we have never had to reboot an IBM i, but it is so rare, and almost always we know exactly why we are doing it.

Good timing. Am at a client today where the Windows Server OS got corrupted and they had to reload the server. So the server's been down for hours, looks like they have to restore from tape, and reset everything back to the way it was - seems like an all day job (dozens of users without access to their documents).

Me? I'm just coding and testing away on the i - system up, users working, no problems here.

I have never received a message from the iSeries telling me that anything has been corrupted.

Obviously everyone has differing opinions and experiences but I think it is safe to say that a solid OS with an integrated DB and native/integrated ILE environment for a business language (i.e. RPG/CL) is the place to be for the next generation of computing (let alone yesterday's generation of computing). The IT community is going through some significant growth pains right now with trying to one-up each other with an attractive/efficient UI and totally dismissing many other aspects of an applications life-cycle. We are going through a stage of producing technologies vs. producing business applications based on already stable technologies (i.e. think about Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight, Sun JavaFX vs. 5250 - yes I realize 5250 is visually unacceptable for users, but so are the aforementioned attempts at a suitable/reliable/longterm replacement).

Once the growth slows and people look at their stretch marks it will be interesting to hear the confessions. "I thought I couldn't go wrong with a company as big as Microsoft" or "We already had IBM in-house with OS400/RPG/DB2 so I didn't think their recommendation of adopting a 100% Java front end would ever be a wrong decision" (Java=EGL).

I run several web sites from my model 515. The system has been down once in the past year, and that was for a few hours to upgrade to V6R1. I have had no unplanned downtime. The websites are always up, and don't fail, no matter how hard they are hit.

But for those who dont run their websites on an i5, this type of uptime is a fantasy. And the type of stability I have from the i5 platform is unheard of with other servers.

I frequently hear the following phrase from business people who run their websites on a non-i5 server who suddenly have a lot of hits to their webpage:

"We got so many hits our web server crashed!!"

I have a breaking news flash for those people; if your business is suddenly getting so many hits that your server crashes, that's not something to be proud of. It simply means the server you run your web site on is a P-O-S.

BULLET-PROOF MEMORY MANAGEMENT!

We may have Green screens, but we never have the Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD).

Did you ever ask a a MS sw vendor to install his product on a server running an other apllication?

He will laugh at you.

An AS400 sw vendor will not even ask you where you want to run it.

Here's my thoughts...

The danger with all this lauding is that IBM mgmt will think IBM i does not need improvement.

The system is increasingly difficult to program. PHP code cannot be reused in a JAVA app, which does not work well with RPG ILE. You can't run SQL natively within CL. The CPP of a command can't be a SRVPGM procedure. RPG does not support objects or SQL result sets. SRVPGMs don't support reflection ( with reflection you dont need RPG procedure prototypes ).

The trade pubs are silent on the subject, but I suspect IBM has decided it cant compete with MSFT on the language and runtime front.

-Steve

Error messages that are the equivalent of 'You're screwed. Click OK.'

I read the postings with excitement and pride. I guess two IT problems that IBM i does not have are customer loyalty and appreciation. IBM i has one of the most loyal customer bases in the IT industry and the customers truly appreciate IBM i. This are clearly visible from the various postings on this blog and the attendance at the COMMON conferences.



Another IT problem that IBM i does not have is training and education. The IBM i Academic Initiative and the COMMON conferences have been doing a great job on this.



I guess we should be proud to be part of the IBM i family.

CORRUPTION!

Windows often fails telling you that something got “corrupted”.

Think about that. The hardware is running fine; there are no disk parity errors; the memory is functioning perfectly; the processors are processing flawlessly. 

So, what “got corrupted” and how did it get that way? It was YOUR data that got corrupted. Some file you haven’t touched and no application program has touched suddenly shows up corrupted. It was the MS operating system that corrupted it. The least Microsoft should do is admit blame. Instead of the passive voice “the file got corrupted” Microsoft should confess “Windows corrupted the file.”

I’ve suggested that Microsoft replace its Blue Screen of Death with the following truthful one:

THE TRUTHFUL BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH

* Press any key to attempt to continue. This will, of course, not work, but you may try if you like to waste your time. 
* Press CTL+ALT+DEL again to attempt to restart your computer. Windows will throw away everything you have been working on and there is nothing you can do about it. In addition, Windows will most likely not write out your disk control and linkage information when it shuts down. When you try to start again you will be told that Windows was not shut down properly and that you should have used Shut Down. You are being blamed – as if this crash was your fault. 
* A Scan Disk will be performed when you start again. During the Scan Disk, Windows will discover the mess that was made of your disk storage. Windows will proceed to “fix” the disk. This will not actually fix anything. It will merely throw away everything of yours that it has messed up so that it doesn’t have to deal with it again. You will not be told what is now broken. You will discover that when you are doing something very important and find that it no longer works and you cannot recover. Windows Technical Support will tell you something must have somehow gotten corrupted. They don’t know what it is or how to recover it. Have a nice day.

So far Microsoft hasn’t taken my suggestion.

The vast majority of IBM midrange shops are small with minimal staff and yet support moderate sized enterprises. We can do that because we don't spend time solving the technical problems of the computer, instead we are able to dedicate our often limited resources to solving the problems and opportunities of the business.

We in the IBM midrange world can truly have our machines run in a "lights out" environment. On any other platform, lights out means the machine is down.

RLK

As a long time ex-AS/400 developer, the best thing I miss about the environment is the contextual arrangement. You are never just plonked into a dark screen with a flashing green prompt. There is always respect for the new-comer, respect for the scale and complexity of what you are trying to achieve for your business: a logical database application. To this end, having a rigorously named set of commands, and being able to access system resources in an object-oriented way, through friendly forms, is not just the best way to avoid the usual log-jam of misunderstanding but it increases developer productivity. Ultimately the i platform is the most cost effective platform for the long-haul.