System iNetwork

I was just at the COMMON Europe Congress in Krakow and Dr. Soltis mentioned this effort in his talk. He is pretty excited about the effort and is looking forward to see what the results are.

Thank you, Chris! This is the "White Elephant" in the room for many years. IBM has definitely hung the i out to dry as they first did with the users of some of the i's products such as REXX and Code/400.

When IBM deprecates one part of the family, it is bad for the whole family. Now RPG-IV has been deprecated without a creditable replacement such as the i's own native C++. EGL is a no-starter.

IBM could have made C++more "Visual" as Microsoft did to C# and ASP.NET but no, they just walked away.

Howls of outrage should have been coming from us!

Dear Chris san,
As the Director for International Relations of the iManifest Advisory Board Japan, I would like to thank you on the Board members’ behalf for your excellent article and kind support for our initiative in Japan.

Your article and the message in it gives us the confidence and power to further promote IBM ‘i’ in the Japanese Market.

We would like to see many more colleagues in the IBM ‘i’ Business Partner and Vendor community around the world share our belief that we jointly have a mission to convey IBM ‘i’ ‘s excellence and superiority.

For your information, the automatic translation of the Google’ translate engine was somewhat inaccurate. Among the four key people, ‘IBM ‘i’ manifest’, Mr. Itirou Susumu Sawa Percimon (Miwa KOMUTEKKU, Inc) should read “Mr. Shin Ichiro Kakizawa, President, CEO Sanwa Comtec Inc.)

Nice grassroots effort in Japan. It would be nice to see similar efforts in other continents and countries.

IBM's i is dead.

Before the last i-developer closes shop (no, he isn't kicked out, he just retires), he will have worked day and night to migrate the company apps from the looser "i" platform to the winner "SAP" and "Oracle" platforms.
So when will that time be? Given the average age of the i-developer is 50-55 and 50% of the workforce already retires before the age of 60, you're guess is as good as mine

This is an excellent initiative. My thanks to your new group, and good fortune.

With regard to the Oracle guy up there, hehe, I have been hearing that stuff since bofore you were invented. 8)

The System I remains an incredible business solution, and will for some time to come. It is the centerpiece for a plethora of businesses, both large and small. You might consider it old school, but it is those old school basics that remain proftiable in today's challenging markets.

Again, good fortune to the ISeries zealots in Japan.

Mike

Can't ignore the Red flags for ibm i:

- number of companies leaving the platform is higher then those who enter
- aging population of developers (averaging 50-55).
- no more scholar education of rpg or as400 architecture in general for the past decade
- increasing number of former as/400 ISP's now writing software for other systems - appearant lack of modern applications backed by large ISP's
- the sense of urgency to defend the platform (as in this case), and this by NON Ibm organisations
- the lack of meaningfull and effective promotion of the platform by IBM itself

IBM should take a leaf out of this initiative by this Japanese group and further promote incredible machine.
---Venky

ugeerts writes: "IBM's i is dead."

So, why are you still following a forum that promotes IBM i? It cannot be very dead if it has followers, even the doomsday predictors such as yourself.

FYI, www.youngiprofessionals.com represent a future which you seem to ignore.

IMHO the major problem behind the abandoning of the glorious AS/400 is that most of the applications are written in RPG. These applications are indeed very robust, just think at the many years of fine tuning after the initial release, but they lack a modern look and feel.
IBM, and partners, have a great offering of tools that allow an RPG application to be modernized to expose business logic component as Web Services, to operate in a SOA environment, to address the paradigms of the Web 2.0 but …… how many developers inside ISVs or part of an internal IT team are able, and willing, to use these tools ?
There is a huge gap among the ideal and the real world. This is true in any scenarios – also in the modern world of the “young” windows developers, but is more evident within the RPG developers community because of the “age”. A 50 years old developers is not that willing to learn the standards behind a SOA !! He prefers keep writing AS/400 applications the same way he used to do since he was 25: monolithic code with 5250 interface. In some cases companies are running applications developed from ISVs that now don’t exist anymore. Modernizing an application written by some else is very difficult if not impossible.
I’m personally working with an Italian ISV who, with the IBM’s support, is trying to find a quick way to split a monolithic RPG application into a modern 3 separated layers to then rewrite the presentation layer in java. Another ISV has developed a FLEX RIA (Rich internet application) that allow the drag and drop development of business intelligent applications eventually linked to other services (like google maps) exposed as web services. On the AS/400 side is quite easy to publish batch programs as web services using two standard IBM tools.
But, as I said before, most of the RPG applications cannot be modernized because first of all it’s not that easy, unless you choose the way to intercept the 5250 streaming to produce a windows like GUI, secondly most of the RPG programmers are miles away from the IBM latest technologies that could revamp the AS/400.

IBM i is a very interesting and exciting 'creature' aspecially for students and 'younger' people. As an IBMer I regularly deal with universities and have guest lectures. Students are comming on internships to me. They prefer 5250 instead of iNavigator :-). Congratulations for Japan.

I may not be Japanese, but I wouldn't have any problem adding my name to the manifest. It's nice to feel that I have family on the other side of the world. It's impressive to see so many names on the list.

A week ago I became acquainted with another cub scout leader during a mountain hike who turned out to be a DBA working with Oracle and Microsoft databases. He shared some of his frustrations with some of the tedious aspects of distributed and disparate database technology. He was intrigued to learn that the IBM i database is actually built-in to the operating system, and fully integrated with OS level authority and authentication - you don't have to manage users and their authorities in multiple products. It was a little puzzling for him to understand the level of integration that we take for granted.

May the platform "live long and prosper" - Uh, I just saw the new Star Trek movie this weekend ;-)

Nathan

ugeerts wrote "from the looser [sic] "i" platform to the winner "SAP" and "Oracle" platforms. Why would anyone migrate from an OS to an ERP solution or to a database? What are they teaching them in kindergarten these days?

John - I'm confused by your post. You end by saying "Howls of outrage should have been coming from us!"

I among other have "howled" over many things but I don't understand the targets of your objections.

First you say "hung the i out to dry as they first did with the users of ... products such as REXX and Code/400."

But Rexx is still fully supported on the platform and performs much better these days than the early releases. And CODE/400 is still part of WDSC - I have it and WDSC and RDi on my PC. In what possible way is any CODE user "hung out"??

Similarly you say "Now RPG-IV has been deprecated ..." - In which universe? I'm sure my friends on the compiler team will be surprised to hear this. There were significant updates in 6.1 and plans are underway for future releases. The only people I have heard suggesting this are a few misguided souls in Rational. There's no IBM position that RPG is deprecated and if you know of one - please let me know. I know many IBMers who would be more than happy to "correct" them!!

Venky,

"IBM should take a leaf out of this initiative by this Japanese group and further promote incredible machine."

No - we need ISVs in Europe and North America to take the lead. In many ways IBM as a corporate entity can currently make more money selling support services on other "solutions" than it can on IBM i. We helped to create that scenario by insisting that they keep cutting the prices so that they had no significant hardware margin any more.

We've waited a very long time for IBM to market the platform effectively - it hasn't happened and probably never will. It is up to those with a vested interest in the furtherance of the platform to take the lead.

If not IBM - maybe COMMON? See our blog this week at http://ibmsystemsmag.blogs.com/idevelop/

---

Not all of us 50 year old (Okay, I'm only 49) RPG programmers are unwilling to learn. Often times the problem is convincing those that pay for your time that it is time well spent. The existing tools just happen to work too well at producing usable and reliable business software. Add to that no "blessed from IBM" standard and INTEGRATED with RPG interface other than 5250 and we continue to get 5250 interfaces.

I'm trying to find something better. I'm hoping to find something that can easily integrate with RPG to provide the user interface. PHP looks good, but, having a family, my spare time is limited. That's where being "50" gets in the way of work...

I still believe in RPG as a solid language. I'm still amazed that this is the language and platform I defend. In college it was the last one I would have picked. Experience has changed my mind.

Jon paris wrote "We've waited a very long time for IBM to market the platform effectively - it hasn't happened and probably never will. It is up to those with a vested interest in the furtherance of the platform to take the lead..."

Noble thought, but makes no sense whatsoever. Companies have no interest in defending an IT platform, they just want their business to run efficiently and with the full plethora of all tools modern IT technologies can offer. Ibm i just offers (solid, yes) green screen text processing that results in drab accounting balance reports ... at least that's what the world is thinking!!

Of the Top 500 fortune companies, about 15% run their business on as/400 (60% mainframe, 25% other). Of those 15%, half of them are migrating to SAP, Oracle based solutions or mainframe right this very minute. Ibm knows it, but it doesn't make much difference since most of them continue to stick with Ibm gear (only if they went to HP, that would stir some panic). So devoted as/400 zealots, don't expect Ibm to come to the rescue.

Ugeerts writes: "Companies have no interest in defending an IT platform" and "AS/400 Zealots, don't expect IBM to come to the rescue". We seem to have come full circle back to the original topic - the launch of iManifest in Japan by over 70 IT vendors.

To recap, the iManifest members believe that IBM i is an excellent platform with a bright future.

Like Ugeerts, they believe it is stupid to expect the platform's customers to promote it, just as no-one would expect a soft-drink consumer to plan and directly fund a soft drink company's marketing and ad initiatives. Like Ugeerts, the iManifest members believe that is not realistic to wait for IBM to promote IBM i (regardless of whether IBM should do so).

Unlike Ugeerts, the iManifest members believe there is a positive way forwards for IBM i. That way is to identify those supplier organizations outside IBM who have a vested commercial interest in the continued success of IBM i, and mobilize them to actively promote IBM i and to take responsibility for the platform's health in the Japan market. Those with most at stake, Japan's top-Tier Power System distributors with IBM i channels and a large installed base of downstream customers, are actively involved in a leadership role. Many of the other IBM i vendor community participants are also actively involved. There is sound commercial sense in the approach adopted. Therefore I suggest skeptics wait and see what happens over the coming months, rather than prematurely declaring the initiative and the platform doomed :)

ugeerts,

Yes, many applications and people are migrating off of the platform. But it's far from dead. I'll use the example of COBOL.

Over 50 years ago, someone had a tombstone engraved stating "RIP {rest in peace} COBOL". Now let me pose a question, did you like getting your last paycheck? I'll wager you did. Somewhere in the production of the check, the calculations, the transmission or recording of the funds to pay it, recording and tracking the taxes collected, paid, and due, there was probably COBOL involved. Most financial transactions in the world involve some kind of processing by COBOL. It's estimated that there are over a half-a-trillion lines of COBOL code in use by financial institutions. It's simply not practical to replace systems developed over the course of two or three decades. That's why I believe the example of COBOL is relevant to how IBM i will survive. IBM i still supports applications developed over the past three decades.

In the history of COBOL, there came a time when people loathed to think about writing in it. It was just not considered a proper language. Of course, those people have all moved on and now there are young people who see it as a useful language. "Younger engineers who grew up with PCs in their bedrooms actually are embracing COBOL as another area of knowledge that might help them." (See the article at:

The same will hold true for IBM i. Too many industries use it too heavily and successfully. Attempts will be made to replace it--some will even be successful. But the sheer weight of the transactions processed with security and stability ensure a long future to the platform.

Your arguments are not new. Perhaps it's your kind of argument that's dead. COBOL has long outlived its predicted death. IBM i will long outlive you.

I agree with Jon and Nathan, and both applaud Japan's initiative and agree that more of the same needed from elsewhere as well.

While I still write 5250 business apps because it's preferred by all using it for business transaction processing, that is, not point and click querying, and while I think the 5250 screen display is quite beautiful in its blues and oranges or whatever the scheme may be as it processes and displays data as fast as people can move their fingers, there are large markets for internet apps as well, and we do that the same as anyone else, statements to the contrary notwithstanding.

It's funny that the iseries is pooh poohed as a web server, when in fact it may be the most sophisticated web server on the market. That's probably too bold to say, but probably also the truth. I've recently brought up both a Linux server and an iseries server, configured both for internet web serving.

I did the Linux first, I don't know if people are aware of this much but while there are some works in progress on server admin apps, most of the work is done on the command line in a terminal window. I wonder how many people try to morph Linux/Unix/DOS terminal windows in with 5250 to try to disparage it? Working with a system with 5250 is night and day from working with a Linux/Unix/DOS terminal display.

But when I brought up the web server on the iseries, I not only wasn't in a Unix style terminal display, I wasn't even in the much more powerful 5250 display. I was in web pages with wizards, all served by the iseries to bring me screens to bring up my first web server!

This kind of stuff is never talked about, but this is quite powerful technology, technology that the admins of other systems certainly won't talk about.

Now granted, Windows types will always say they have a more powerful keystroke/mouseclick GUI interface, but the philosophy is totally different. The ideries is expected to be serving hundreds of people and running thousands of jobs as you do this. It actually runs businesses. The Windows fanboys have no clue as their machine is oh so carefully responding to each touch of a key, instead of responding to the needs of an entire business.

That actually is the difference, something that businesses run by iseries understand and others will never hear about.

rd

IBM i is still breathing. So, it is not dead. And it has a group of loyal supporters and followers who are trying their best to nurture it back to health.


Having said that, the fate of IBM i is in the hand of the "God" (i.e., IBM). The supporters and loyal followers of IBM i are doing their best on the ground and praying hard to the "God".


If we want to see progress and enhancement, it has to come from the "God" (i.e., IBM).

>>>FYI, www.youngiprofessionals.com represents a future which you seem to ignore.



Good point, Trevor.


Also, the Power Systems Academic Initiative is doing a great job in exposing and training college and university students to IBM Power Systems, which includes IBM i.


Not only do we want to train the next generation Power Systems technicians, programmers, managers, etc., but we also need to bring about "IBM Power Systems Awareness" to business managers and executives.


We need people to run the systems and provide business values to businesses. We also need business managers and executives to appreciate IBM Power Systems and to sign the checks to purchase and upgrade the IBM Power Systems.

I think I can answer the "So, why are you still following a forum that promotes IBM i?" question with one word..."troll".

I don't know how many shops are switching to Oracle, etc. I do not really care. I bet somewhere down the line, maybe not too far down, they'll wish they had not switched.
I am not far from 50. I've been programming for a little less than 25 years. I've programmed in COBOL and RPG all that time but I've also been lucky and have been able to do other things too. I've been able to dink around with PCs (yuk) and code in BASIC (a long time ago), and in Lotus Notes, and in Oracle Forms, and recently in PHP. I'm still coding in RPG too. I try to use the more modern flavor of RPG in an ILE way. All of it can be done by an old dog if that dog's company allows it. There is new blood coming in also. Either from young people or from other countries renewing their interest in the i. So, everyone, quit your complaining, learn something new, keep moving forward, and promote as you can (big or small) how great the i is. It really is. I believe any independent study would come to that conclusion.

Ralph,

..."Now granted, Windows types will always say they have a more powerful keystroke/mouseclick GUI interface, but the philosophy is totally different. The ideries is expected to be serving hundreds of people and running thousands of jobs as you do this. It actually runs businesses. The Windows fanboys have no clue as their machine is oh so carefully responding to each touch of a key, instead of responding to the needs of an entire business."

Don't forget business running windows do not run on Windows XP or Vista. They run in their datacenter on a Windows 2003 or 2008 Server edition. Imho, the same stubornness that developers outside iseries look upon the iseries as an old-school-legacy machine, affects also the iseries developer who relates windows to a flawed o/s that needs to reboot all the time. Fact is Windows Server editions have blown the iseries out of the water in small businesses (SMB), not only for it robustness and stability, but also for it seamless integration with office apps on the windows clients, and the bar (number of employee's > 500) is still rising.

Keng,

...Having said that, the fate of IBM i is in the hand of the "God" (i.e., IBM). The supporters and loyal followers of IBM i are doing their best on the ground and praying hard to the "God".

I fully agree, Ibm is fighting back. They lowered pricing, increased performance, did away with the 5250 governor (interactive tax) in the latest hardw release. But on the application front, Ibm is in no way the leader it was once. They've lost a lot of critical mass since the as/400 haydays in 1998, and the jury is still out wether the ibm i o/s will survive or not. I personally see only Iseries shops (Germany, France region) who are either keep alive their apps until a final decision on a future road plan is taken or either shops who are activaly migrating to Oracle or SAP (no, not Windows). I wish there were iseries shops who are modernizing, using PHP, using WDSC, using Websphere application server but sorry, the reality is I don't know any in Western Europe.

This is great to see IBM's ISV stepping up to promote the IBM i platform. To help those ISVs in Japan and all over the world continue to develop on i, IBM offers the Virtual Loaner Program (www.ibm.com/systems/vlp). The VLP provides ISVs with free access to IBM i systems for development. Simply go to the VLP site, select the HW/OS/CPU/Mem specs and the system is automatically provisioned within 2 hours!

"Noble thought, but makes no sense whatsoever. Companies have no interest in defending an IT platform, they just want their business to run efficiently and with the full plethora of all tools modern IT technologies can offer."

I agree - but you didn't read what I said. I said that those with a vested interest in the platform (i.e. the ISVs and BPs as in Japan) should be promoting it.

If you really want evidence of the stupidity of moving away from i, look no further than your own reference to SAP. Most (honest) SAP folks will tell you that it runs as well if not better on i than any other platform. But they won't tell customers that because it would reduce their consulting revenue. All of which makes it doubly sad when an i shop moves to another platform to adopt SAP.

ugeerts, we're talking about servers and server administration here. Your comments about Windows desktops are a misunderstanding. I was comparing server administration of iseries, Linux, and Windows.

Philip, thanks for that info on IBM's Virtual Loaner Program. Very innovative of IBM, glad to hear it.

Now for some more compelling software that people will want to pick up an iseries new or used to run.

rd

I wish I had a nickel for everyone who has pronounced the best box on the planet dead....I would be a millionaire....

It is still the best of breed and has outlasted all other midrange machines because of it's intensely loyal fan base and the fact that it still is based upon the best of the best pieces that the IT industry is still copying today. The logical partitioning (VMWARE), the unbreakable audit journal that cannot tell a lie (no one has copied this yet), the single level storage, every part is an object that cannot be broken by malicious viruses, the list goes on and on. It is still the only C2 government compliant machine available.

The other thing that keeps this machine alive is the very strong supporters that are working with the local colleges to get the idea accross to young people that IBM is not a dead company and there is a business machine that is worth learning about.

Jon Paris posts of June 15 (11:41 am) and June 18 7:58pm have captured the essence of iManifest perfectly. (I speak because of my involvement in the project from outside Japan as an advisor). The key point is that user groups (whether LUG, COMMON or whoever) are excellent for providing feedback to IBM re future requirements, satisfaction levels, and their experience with the platform. However we can not expect "end-user organizations" (otherwise known as customers) to promote IBM i. Jon is spot on when he says: "... those with a vested interest in the platform (i.e. the ISVs and BPs as in Japan) should be promoting it." The key supply-side players outside IBM imo, whether in Japan or elsewhere, are the Tier-1 Power System Distributors with i capability, the BPs who are Power Systems i-focused resellers and finally ISVs. The most concentrated point at which leverage into the market can be applied is the Distributor. But as Jon says the ISV is a critical player, especially considering the heritage of AS/400 as "Applications System" 400. So to recap, the iManifest initiative has correctly positioned the distributors, resellers and ISVs who are passionate about i as the true "ball carriers" to take IBM i forward in the market, given IBM's apparent reluctance to promote the platform actively itself.

Some comments on the last posts:

Jon,
sorry to say SAP doesn't run on i. It needs a 3th party RDBMS which in general is Adabas (when on mainframe) or Oracle (wintel, linux or vendor unix machines). And yes, I won't mention any names, but some of the largest botller companies in the US are in the process of moving worldwide to SAP. The process takes about 4 years... but that doesn't stop them. Funny heh!?

Ralph,
when talking about server administration, just as an example, keep in mind that Windows Server runs Active Directory. In a windows network, the domain controller (DC) automatically assembles and inventorizes all hardware -computers and printers- on the network. Next to that, all user accounts are entered in the DC together with the corporate user policy (controlling password validity, renewal times etc). In practically all shops I've seen, the AS/400 box is just a slave box under the control of a windows based DC.

Gordon,
I don't care much about religious debates regarding what is the best machine. It may be i or not i (i'm not a machine lol). What's important are jobs and on what platforms demand these jobs. If iseries machines manages to attract more jobs and ibm i regains again its leadership it once had in this space, I will change my tune. Incidently, IBM now seen adopting (copying) someone elses technology like Java and PHP and trowing away the ibm http server and replacing it with apache... is something most businesses don't perceive as strong leadership. What a difference if you attend a SAP course; most students hang on the lips of the tutor as if he is some kind of guru. SAP shows the leadership IBM had years ago.

Jon, sorry to say SAP doesn't run on i.

Kolby Hoelzle has more than seven years of experience working with SAP on IBM i, including two years at SAP development in Walldorf, Germany, as part of a joint IBM-SAP development team.

Good point Nathan, but only partly true. Sap traditionally is a middle ware consisting of the R/3 kernel using ABAP - a sort of mainframe COBOL enhanced with 'visual' commands to drive a graphical client -, with on the backend a third party RDBMS (Ibm i DB2 not supported) and on the frontend SAPGUI (windows or linux based client).
The traditional R/3 kernel does not run on Ibm i under os/400.

Since 2000, the leaders in IT technology, Oracle and SAP, began introducing Java in their products and actually turned it into a succes (unlike java on Ibm i which suffered from serious underperformance when ibm roared the java drums the loudest back in 2002 - the days Ibm shouted rpg programmers would be flipping burgers).

As for SAP, SAP introduced a supplementary, next to R/3, java based middleware they called SAP Netweaver which primary goal as the name says, was to function as a web application server. It runs on any platform that supports java, including ibm i.

As for IBM, I really start to pitty them. Those Rochester managers should be lashed by the whip on a daily basis for their stupidity in the last 9 years.
They managed to loose all their ISV's during that time, and now they are in a pathetic sort of way, trying to turn the as/400 back into an appealing development platform, but those fools are too late!

If only they had the vision Oracle and SAP had at the end of the nineties... . Now all IBM i can state is 'looook Ma, I can do PHP and mysql too... Looook ma, I can do java too, I can do some SAP too....". Phew, pathetic.

I believe a single factor weighs heavily on IBM i in the marketplace: The failure of the IT community to close ranks behind meaningful professional standards such as those adopted by the engineering disciplines.



As a consequence, the qualifications of our industry's leadership is spotty at best. Of course the deck is stacked by PC architecture fans: The platform is universally accessible, and nobody is holding incoming "professionals" to any standard of training or education. Once such individuals have the ear of their bosses, why wouldn't they endorse the only system they know about?


Yes, qualified IT pros know what IBM i has to offer. Regrettably, we don't run the show any more.

Shame on us!

As the "IBM i Manifest" is an example to follow, we have devoted 2 pages in the July issue of the ServerNEWS magazine to widespread among the AS/400 Spanish-speaking community. We've added an entry into our blog Help400 with a summary of it.

If you have business interests in the AS/400 market and want to cooperate in our project of “i-vangelism”, let us a comment and an e-mail address and we will contact.

Help400 is the publisher of ServerNEWS magazine, the only Spanish magazine focused on IBM Power Systems (System i - AS/400) business and technology. ServerNEWS brings vital information to 20.000 spanish professionals (Spain and Latinoamerica) and help them to make strategic business decisions, solve programming problems, improve performance and security, and assess hardware and software products.

Mr. Paris!

IBM deprecates products on the i when, following IBM's lead, the suppliers drop all support for migration, etc.

Just follow the money and you will see that ALL third-party vendors have treated REXX and Code/400 and many; many other products that looked so promising back in the early 90's as if they just do not exist. No service. Please stop drinking the "i-is the best" Kool-aid. That argument was lost several years ago. Now just follow the money and, oh, by the way, the jobs. Mr. Paris: Wrong Decade.

Other good news for the successors of the i: Rational is releasing substantially upgraded EGL on Windows platforms. That way developers can produce new products for just about all IBM Platforms. That undercuts one of M$'s crushing advantages.

IBM: buy RDi and WDSc and hold all IDE tools tightly to your chest. Show your commitment! --

John

Call for Participation: iManifest EMEA


http://midmed.blogspot.com/2009/07/imanifest-emea-call-for-participation.html


Enough words, time for action?


Martin

Did the Truly Qualified IT Pros Drop the Ball?

I don't think so.
Then who dropped the ball?

1)
The RPG developers sticking with RPG (S36, S38, 400) code, using their favorite style of files (flat), their favorite style of code (monolithic 10000 line spagetti monster programs), using SEU, using record i/o, refusing to learn SQL, or anything else new and claiming all MS stuff to be coming from the devil himself.

2)
The Ibm Rochester managers milking the faitfull hardware buying customers like cash cows and dropping their ISV's like they had a bad smell in the 2000-2005 period, thinking their hardware was the latest and greatest on the planet and claiming all mass produced (64 bit quad core) processors coming from Intel or AMD to be manufactured by the devil himself.

The rest is history, and considering the slow but steady shrinking number of iseries shops and jobs since 2000, so will be the ibm i o/s in the next decade.

IBM i works! All others are dead!!

Ride living horse and a dead one.

But IBM needs to create an awareness about this magic machine among the students.

Not even a single student doing their Engineering degree in India knows about this machine. This is not a good sign. IBM has to come up the strategies to create awareness of this incredible machine.

Again IBM i ( only )works!