Bob,
You make some valid observations in your various notes and blogs about the
likely actions of IBM over the next 5 years. I don't think it's a revelation
to anyone reading this that the IBM i market is not a growing one. Trevor
Perry has voiced a viewpoint that's certainly not unique but equally not
representative of the whole community as he tries to imply. There is the
absolute truth in what Trevor is saying that there is still a substantial
user base that is committed to IBM i. Vendors are leaving and have been for
some time now, but that's not unusual in a market that is not rapidly
growing. There is also still enough of a group of leading thinkers in the
community of people like Trevor Perry, Jon Paris, Aaron Bartell (and many
others) and even my own company and vendors like Linoma who are very capable
of evolving and supporting the major innovation requirements of the IBM i
market in RPG for at least another 10 years. Surely even in care and
maintenance mode iCustomers could continue successfully and competitively
with such a support community?
IBM created the platform in the first place. RPG obviously had just the
right ingredients to combine with this that set this incredible train in
motion many years ago. The partner and support community have provided the
rest in terms of innovation and shear hard work. Here we are 30 years or
so later and some of those people in this community are still around, my
boss is one of them. More importantly their applications are still around
and doing a great job! It's true that there is an alarmingly small RPG skill
base out there. Alarming if you need to build an entire new set of business
applications that run the world's economy that is. But we don't. Those
applications are largely all written. Of course almost all of them need
reengineering to some degree(some a lot) to take advantage of modern
technologies , make them more maintainable and the higher level of user
expectations.
Over the last 10 years at least IBM has continued to do what it does best
in the IBM i market space: combine brilliant innovation and product with
equal amounts incompetent commercial decisions. That's has obviously damaged
the potential growth of the IBM i market I would agree. I would even go so
far as to say that ultimately it probably will spell the demise of the
platform. There is just too much code in too many companies across the globe
to warrant that this will occur in 5 years. And don't underestimate the
determination or resourcefulness of Mr Perry's army (Trevor sign me up).
Look at what happened in Japan with iManifest
http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh062209-story03.html
There has been a pretty intense response to your blog and this thread Bob.
You do have a distinguished and successful career in IBM i and I, and i am
sure others while agreeing with you, would rather see your thoughts on how
to sustain the platform.
Stuart
Bob Cancilla wrote:
Walden,
Been a long time, but I left IBM and am back in the mainstream. Sadly the
iSeries aka IBM i Operating System is on its way to extinction IMHO and in a
very short period of time. Read details in
<
http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/200908/msg00717.html> my blog:
http://i-nsider.blogspot.com/
Today the shift in
<
http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/200908/msg00717.html> technologies
to Web 2.0 based technology, AJAX and
<
http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/200908/msg00717.html> browser
centric tooling around JavaScript, Google
<
http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/200908/msg00717.html> Widgets, Dojo,
etc.
coupled with SOA or at least Web Service based applications are the
direction of today and our beloved old iSeries does not play well in the
space.
At IBM I was an advocate for EGL and still am. Java is great, but too over
the top complex and time consuming for business application development.
EGL leverages <
http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/200908/msg00717.html>
Java and Web 2.0 but is fast and easy.
PHP is great but too complex and doesn't do enough. Its really no more than
old Net.Data was, or CGIDEV2 is -- a bridge between programs or data on the
<
http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/200908/msg00717.html> server and
HTML and JavaScript on the browser. You have to learn all of the
technologies you are using.
Stuart Milligan
Tel: 917 267 7523
Toll Free: 800 605 5023 ext 81
Fax: 866 266 3165
web: www.databorough.com
midrange.com
