RE: i5 Youngsters -- MIDRANGE-NONTECH

The question is: What advantage does the System i give you when running

modern technologies on it. What advantages do you have when you're running
PHP or Java exclusively on it?

To me this is easy: I don't have to run Windows. I am surrounded by Windows
desktops and servers. They require a lot of man-power to keep running IMO.
Sure they have some excellent "latest features" but that doesn't come at a
cost. Microsoft is VERY famous for releasing software before it should be.

I agree that i5/OS doesn't give you deep integration when you get outside of
RPG (bummer), but it is still a more solid OS that I would rather run my
business on.

Your list doesn't include an ERP software. Which i usually think of being

70% of a Business.

Here's one: http://www.openbravo.com/product/technology/. Though it doesn't
support DB2 out of the box (Oracle and Postgresql).

Our company has recently taking a closer look at Google for some group ware
stuff. We are a remote workforce and rely heavily on
Outlook/Exchange/Blackberry's/BlackberryEnterpriseServer/InstantMessaging.
With Google's latest updates for the Blackberry one could use their tool
entirely to do calendars (shared), emails, and IM (Jabber, Trillian Pro).
The verdicts still out on Google Documents for me, and instead I have been
using OpenOffice successfully for around 9 months now, and would consider it
a solid replacement for MS Office for 90% of all users. It has good
interoperability with MS Office. I don't even have MS Office on my main
work machine anymore (I would consider that a successful switch).

I think ASP's and SAAS is going to get a lot more facetime in the future
(look at Google Docs), which puts much less of a footprint on the client
side. The way things are going, the desktop becomes simply a place to
interface all your hardware (printer, camera, external HD's, etc) vs. being
relied on to host a ton of applications. That's where having a System i
seems to make sense, a single/central box where you do everything. I think
the main thing people have a problem with is the price. If the System i
could come in at $5k I think we wouldn't even be having this conversation
but instead looking for what else we could run on the machine.

Thoughts?
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-nontech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-nontech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Lukas Beeler
Sent: Monday, January 14, 2008 3:01 PM
To: Non-Technical Discussion about the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: Re: i5 Youngsters

On 1/14/08, Aaron Bartell <albartell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"How many companies are switching TO the System i?"

I would be VERY surprised if a new customer would pick RPG on the System i
for new development, so I won't consider that an option. I do see value

having all your processes/servers running on a single machine using

multiple

LPARs.

Virtualization in the PC world goes in the same direction, though both
the HW Partitioning and the SW Virtualization approach have both their
shares of advantages and disadvantages. Of course, the PC world is
still mostly working toward a vertical scaling approach, but that
doesn't mean that there arent PC systems that scale upwards.

Just look athe the System x 3950. Together with VMware's suite of
products, you can get some very nifty things that the System i can't
give you. e.G. live migration of VMs between machines.

Would that be enough pull to get a shop who develops in PHP to buy a
System i? Think of all the knowledge learning they would have to do to
maintain it? It isn't huge, but it is a new knowledge set that will have

live through the half-life of information and be kept up on as new things
come down the pipe.

Learning to do proper LPARs or SW Virtualization is the same amount of work.

The question is: What advantage does the System i give you when
running modern technologies on it. What advantages do you have when
you're running PHP or Java exclusively on it?

There are many things about the System i that i like - job logs,
WRKACTJOB drill down, the debugging facilities, etc. pp. But they have
limited use when not using "native" applications (i.E. RPG et al).

Just look at how much of a nightmare Web Query is to debug. Web Query
is just an alien on that plattform. It doesn't belong there. And it's
what IBM ships for the System i as a BI software.

And now, look at SQL Server 2005 reporting services and the tools that
surrounds them. It just integrates.

I would think pre-packaged System i machines with things like
SugarCRM/Alfresco/Joomla/VOIP/etc would be attractive for a small business
owner if they could get it all for 15K. To have a one stop server that

runs

90% of my business would be appealing.

Your list doesn't include an ERP software. Which i usually think of
being 70% of a Business. And then there's the whole groupware
business.

I mostly work with Small Businesses. I think i know a lot about them,
but then again i'm not in the US.

We had a few new customers in the past few years, and the situation
was always more or less the same.

A Small Business is growing. They have a few hacked together machines
running Windows 2000/XP, with no central server. Backups are a
nightmare. An ERP application doesn't exist, just some very low cost
(~500$) financial software.

They want to remedy that, and get professional IT.

Microsoft SBS Premium comes with a SQL Server workgroup license. Costs
700 US$. Throw on a halfway decent PC server and a tape drive, backup
software - say 10k. Add
the usual git, office licenses, new desktops. You get a well
integrated solution. Sure, it's design with everything on a single
machine it's not exactly by-the-book, but it's better than what they
had before.

Now, think about doing the same with a System i. Machine with DB
licenses sets you off at around 15-20k. You don't have Groupware yet.
Your machines don't have central authentication. Heck, you don't even
have a decent working file share. So you'll have to tack on a Windows
server or pay the price of a Windows server just to get Notes on your
i.

Fast forward 5 years. The small Business has grown. Now at 40 people,
working an aged SBS machine that worked flawlessly for the past 5
years. Do you think they'll switch or just migrate to the latest MS
technology? (Which is usually well done, though different from an
i5/OS upgrade).

60% of the Swiss Economy consists of Businesses with less than 15
people. If you don't get well with the Small Businesses, you'll lose
here.