Re: Why i??? NEED YOUR INPUT

Hi All,

Was on a call with IBM and the YiPs team yesterday. They are looking for
ways to liven up, and modernize, their message about the benefits of the IBM
i. The cool thing is that the folks on the phone weren’t your traditional
marketing folks but people that have grown up with the machine and actually
BELIEVE it is one of the best platforms for business today – specifically
the IBM i OS.

Justin Porter, Brian May and myself (the YiPs on the call) gave personal
stories of our experiences with IBM i and why it has saved us time, money
and accomplished business goals over our professional life on the platform.
Our comments ranged from being able to trust the system to grow during busy
seasons without interruption or increasing staff, to only having to apply
updates based on business feature needs vs. security vulnerabilities, to the
simplicity and efficiency of modular application development with
RPG+DB2+IBMi.

At the end of the conversation we realized that there are a lot of believers
out there that could share similar stories to benefit the evangelizing of
the platform. *So what is your IBMi success story? What is something you
love about IBMi that you don’t get with Microsoft or other OS vendor? *

Please note that I am going to direct the IBM personnel to this email list
thread to gain insight on what people respond with. If it is possible,
please include your company name and your role.

Below are some points that I have come up with:
- I upgrade IBMi OS when I want to and not based on widespread security
vulnerabilities.

- My integrated-with-the-OS database (DB2) never needs to be restarted, is
never corrupted, and is never unavailable - it just works. I am not a DB
admin nor do I need to be because DB2 on IBMi just works.

- Having the simple, modular, integrated and time tested RPG language allows
me to develop and deploy applications with ease and assurance.

- The word "reboot" isn't in my vocabulary. Restarting the machine happens
so rarely that I sometimes forget my processes.

- I have two IBM i machines exposed to the internet and have never had to be
concerned with them being infected by viruses, trojans, or other malicious
wares because of the object level security built into the IBMi operating
system.

- I am able to manage all of the processes running on my system with a great
amount of detail using the integrated Job Management capabilities of the
IBMi. This helps in getting the right jobs priority when they need it so
daily processing continues to run smoothly. It also provides extensive
information about any given process so I can quickly trouble shoot issues.

- With the integrated job logs I am able to get a snapshot of issues of a
specific user/job should they arise.

- I never have to deal with "Remote Desktop max connection exceeded"
messages when working with IBMi. The integrated, promptable and time tested
command line capabilities of the IBMi allow me to administer the machine
from anywhere with ease.


Aaron Bartell

Lead Developer

RPG-XML Suite (www.rpg-xml.com)