Re: Biggest issue facing YOUR IBM i shop?

IBMi is here to stay.

It is a robust DB platform that competes admirably to the *IX/Oracle solution.

My customers are buying new Power 7 models. The power and stability you get for the price is driving these purchases.

Their app teams are fast developing browser based applications. The back end continues to be managed by RPIG.

There might be hundreds or thousands of simultaneous browser connections and 10 or 15 green screen sessions.

I know of one shop with +- 10 huge IBMi each carved into about 7-8 LPARS (typical system is 34TB of DASD, 768GB memory, and some 100,000 simultaneous users).

These systems are growing.

Jerry




On 8/12/2013 1:25 PM, Booth Martin wrote:

The case that can be made is that the software is where the competitive
advantage lies today. Sure, there is no reason to write your own word
processing program or build your own shopping cart, but if your company
believes their business problems are best solved by techies who only
know software and who have no idea what the company's base business is,
then competitors who maximize their software will eat your company's lunch.

Its all about understanding and using the tools. Does UPS build their
own trucks? No. But their people do understand trucks; they do make
the rules about how their trucks are made.

imho


On 8/12/2013 3:08 PM, Nathan Andelin wrote:

Joel Stone wrote:
Currently we run anything and EVERYTHING, a lot on the iseries.

That's a hard place to be in. Managing disparate technologies is perhaps the most difficult and costly challenge facing most IT organizations today.

In the next few years, the organization will be moving to a more single focused platform.

That makes sense to me. IT has become too complicated, costly, and convoluted.

There are only two choices that we know of for a large company: JDE or SAP.

What about VAI, Infor, and Harris Data? I'd suggest looking at VAI.

I asked if re-writing in RPG or COBOL was an option being
considered. I knew it was a silly question, but it was received
like a suggestion to dump computers and go back to paper
and pencils.

IBM i is not the problem. It's still the best business platform out there, and you can do modern things with it. RPG is not the problem, either. It's still the best business language; you can create web applications, along with batch an other relevant types of applications.

Management looks at this as being in the software business
- which they don't want to be.

That makes sense in most cases. I gather that doesn't help you. You must want to be in the software business. I do too.