Re: Modernizing applications

Bob wrote:

IBM is moving forward with Power Systems and the Power 6
platform. I know for a fact that IBM's Rational SW is gearing
up to support AIX and LINUX as a development platform as well
as a runtime environment.

My points here are that everyone avoids the real issue that
the IBM i market is rapidly and continuously declining and we
all need to figure out what to do about it. There are many
"customers" who still run Beige AS/400's and early versions of
OS/400 and have had no support from IBM for years.

What I see is that pundits who make their living on RPG and the
OS don't want customers to look objectively at what is going on.
I do not feel that it would be appropriate for me to address
staffing levels in the Toronto lab, but if you have contacts
find out how big the RPG & COBOL development teams are... See if
you think the staffing levels are indicative of a strategic
product ...

The fact of the matter is that IBM i is in a major state of
decline and there is no turning it around with no organization
in IBM to do so and there is no IBM organization promoting IBM i
and that is a fact.

The key issues are how long will it last? My estimate is 5 years
-- I might be wrong, it could be next year or it could be 7 years,
but it will happen. Then what? What are the steps that customers
need to to take? Do they need to take any actions? Would you run
an unsupported OS?

IBM was quite good to me, I have no complaint. As far as RPG's
future, it is moronic to believe that a language that runs on one
and only one operating system is a "strategic" language. Will IBM
drop it? You bet they will! When? When they drop the OS. Until
then it will be kept alive and that is all. Will you get
enhancements? Some but not many and nothing significant.

And IBM was good to me too, on the whole.

Certainly, when demand for i machines drops below some threshold, they
will of course drop it. But as I suggested in another thread, I think they
have a delicate balancing act to play in the meantime. As a
services-oriented company, IBM needs to be there when a customer wants to
migrate to a different system. But they can't be seen as abandoning the i.
At least not yet.

That is, they still have to maintain the image that they support their
iSeries customers. Otherwise, they risk losing them to other companies
wanting their modernization business.

Cheers! Hans