From: Steven Spencer
If the cloud is down, and you do not have a puter onsight,
you are immediately dead in the water.
I suspect that you're really underplaying how much your business already depends on the Internet, and if not, then I suspect that you're really missing out on many revenue-generating and cost-saving opportunities.
I've read that about 10 seconds after a Walmart cashier scans a product at the check-out counter anywhere in the world, the manufacturer or supplier of that purchase receives a notification of it. And that kind of communication leads to hundreds of millions of dollars in savings throughout the supply chain.
A few years ago families would gather at charter schools to participate in a lottery to see if their students would be admitted. Often hundreds of applicants hoping to fill a few vacancies would go away disappointed. Today, applicants still outnumber available seats, but the whole process is handled via web-browsers and e-mail. Those who are accepted receive an email with an option to "click here" for admittance. It only took us a few weeks to write that type of application, but it saves hundreds of hours and associated travel costs, year after year, which may expand across the nation.
The State of Utah is something of a pioneer in virtual classroom curriculum (courses offered over the Internet). Harvard researchers are studying our model. I'm sure that you and others could think of hundreds of examples of how the Internet is changing the way the world runs. So if "the cloud is down" it probably won't help much if you have a "puter" on-sight.
But my main point is that there is so much redundancy in Internet infrastructure now that your point about it going down is overstated if not invalid. In most cases it's more probable that an on-sight system goes down. It wasn't always that way, I admit. But we've entered a new era.
What do you do when you want to hire a new employee and the only space left in the building is the computer room? We had a customer that had their AS/400 in their lobby until a toddler who accompanied a parent walked over one day and turned off the power switch.
Bob Cancilla, who used to work for IBM Rational, and used to be an IBM i evangelist has more recently been proclaiming in forums all over the place that the IBM i ecosystem will collapse, perhaps within a few years, and he lays a lot of the blame on RPG programmers and our mind-set. Personally I think Bob is better at selling migration services than predicting the future, but he does make a few good points.
We're stuck in a rut. We resist change. We're so proud and so pleased that our legacy code running core systems around the world like clock-work, that we assume it will ALWAYS remain relevant. But if that were true there wouldn't be so many RPG programmers unemployed, looking for work.
The real future for the IBM i platform will be determined on how well WE adapt to the Internet. Note that I say WE, rather than IBM. IBM is doing a pretty good job on their part. WE are not. WE resist change. WE fail to invest meaningfully. We're suffering from a false sense of entitlement.
One of my friends, an RPG programmer supported a legacy student information system of a school district that operates over 70 schools. Users would call him on the phone for support and before the call ended he would have made a change to a program and fixed the problem that the user called about. That kind of service is remarkable, but it didn't stop the district from side-lining him in favor of a vendor product that provided better Web presence, and additional ability to integrate with the State's system.
-Nathan
midrange.com
