RE: Getting ready for the (far?) future

I understand what you are saying. Your system has plenty of horsepower for your load. But when IBM comes out with IBM i+y and it no longer supports your machine they do not do it out of vindictiveness, or to peddle new iron. They do it to have the newer releases of the software take the best advantage of the latest hardware. I know that many of you develop software and try to support the current release way back to several releases. However if you were a vendor who only supported current - 1 it may free you up to take advantage of all the latest stuff in the OS. For example, temporal tables, etc.
To those who buy newer hardware they want the latest OS to take full advantage of the hardware and not be dumbed down to run on some system sold 8 years ago.

And, judging by the graph at https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=ssm1platformibmi
You may be justified about being concerned about rNext and Power 8.
7.4 dropped the Power 7's that weren't already dropped in 7.3.
7.3 dropped the Power 6's, (although 7.2 already killed many of the cards popular in those models)
7.2 dropped the Power 5's.
7.1 dropped the iSeries (aka Power 4)
There is no mention of Power 8's like the mention of "IBM i 7.3 is the last release to support IBM POWER7 and IBM POWER7+ processor-based systems." at the planning site at https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/687283
Although they have not been nearly as open in the past on updating this site with "future" information. Often much of the stuff labeled future had already appeared on the latest Memo To Users.
All my crystal ball observations are based solely on the references mentioned and not on any other source.

Rob Berendt