Re: New redpaper: i5/OS Program Conversion: Getting readyfor i5/OSV6R1

Lukas Beeler wrote:

There is a driving business need to replace it. An 8 year old machine
cannot, by any means, be considered "reliable". That doesn't mean that
the machine could run four more years without a single hitch. But that
the chance of a failure of the machine becomes higher with each minute
it is still in operation.

You're making big assumptions ... the company can afford to upgrade the
machine (regardless of what type of machine it is), there aren't other
priorities that require the resources, etc.

In big companies, what you say is largely true ... not so in smaller
organizations.

Replacing a system in a planned procedure can be done within a single
day (Small Businesses). I've done this dozen of times. Sometimes there
were a few hiccups, but not much worth mentioning.

Then how do you explain the 8 days of downtime the company I used to
work for experienced when trying to upgrade our CISC system to a RISC
system? We planned out thew wazoo and thought we had all our ducks in a
row. Turned out our disk vendor had LIED to us about the drive
subsystem's compatibility with V3R6.

Replacing a system is indeed a planned procedure ... but weather or not
it can be done in a single day is totally dependent on what the system
is used for. There may be dependencies that have to be resolved. A few
years ago I helped a friend upgrade a system ... we started on Friday
night and didn't finish until Monday morning. We worked non-stop. We
had to upgrade the actual system being replaced, 4 systems that were
dependent on that system, and an application installed on EVERY SINGLE
desktop in the company (about 50 systems).

ISV should educate their customers about the risk of having old
machines.

That all depends on the nature of the ISV's business. I happen to work
for a software tools vendor. We CANNOT tell them what kind of systems
they are going to use. We can't tell them to upgrade on OUR schedule.
We ABSOLUTELY have to work to their schedule.

IBM sells machines. If IBM tells their customers, they should buy a new
machine every three years, even a five your old can tell you WHY they
say this.

Yeah, so they can get more money.

A System i needs regular maintenance, just like any other computer.
You'll need to check PTF levels, apply fixes, check ESA functionality,
check backups, etc. etc.

If you system is running fine, your application isn't dependent on new
functionality in later OS400 versions, and you hardware support is being
handled by a 3rd party vendor, what's the driving need to upgrade?

Yes, a System i can work for years without any attention. So can a
Windows machine, as long as it is not connected to the internet. But
it's bad, very bad practice to do so.

No argument (although a windows machine running a long time without
attention is stretching it a bit) ... none the less, it happens. ISV's
are not in a position to dictate to customers if and when they should
upgrade.

FWIW: Here at MKS, our support group regularly polls our customer base
to find out what the minimum release we should support is. When the
customers are all above a certain release, we feel comfortable bumping
our target release up. Also, we often will have features that can only
be used when you are running above a certain release level.

david