Bob Cancilla on IBM i

Where have all the ISV's gone?

2013-04-12T10:32:00.003-07:00

In 1987 when IBM rolled out the AS/400 there were nearly 5000 ISV's (Integrated Software Vendors) certified by IBM to provide business software that ran on the AS/400.

By the time I was focused on selling development tools to iSeries ISV's in 2007 there were about 1500. Today I used IBM's ISV public search tools to do a query filtered only on IBM i and got less than 200 results.

Go to IBM's ISV Search page: http://www-304.ibm.com/partnerworld/gsd/search.do#ibm-access
The only filter I used was "Verified Platforms" and then "IBM System i (iSeries)". That produced the list of less than 200 ISV"s that have products for IBM i...

Note that this is an IBM web page and that they are using the terms "System i" and "iSeries"...

When you click into the vendor's detail and then subsequently go to the vendors web page, you will find that most of the business software (ERP, Manufacturing, Banking, Accounting, etc.) vendors now offer alternatives to IBM i based software. Most support Linux and Windows.

You will note that some of these vendors support only IBM i, iSeries, or System i. They are the minority.

IBM has been offering assistance to ISV's to move away from languages like RPG, COBOL, or PL1 and move to Java or C++ and move to platform neutral environments where there is no dependency on the OS as there is in some of the IBM i only applications.

If this doesn't send a clear message I don't know what does. We are looking at a loss vendor population of 4% of what it was back in 1987 or a decline of 96%!

Note this is purely based on IBM's own public web pages.

Why IBM Hates IBM i?

2013-03-31T07:19:00.002-07:00

Does it sometimes seem that IBM wants to kill the AS/400, aka eServer iSeries, aka System i, aka IBM i on Power Systems?

The real answer is that they absolutely do want to kill this system. Lets back up and take a look at this system. It was first introduce in June of 1987. IBM had thousands of software vendors selling business application software for just about every industry you could imagine.

Retailers bought small systems for their stores. These systems attached to point of sale devices (fancy cash registers) throughout the store and maintained pricing, customer discounts, customer credit information, and inventory within the store. The machines also connected to master machines located at distribution centers and corporate headquarters and tracked everything.

There were AS/400's in just about every hotel of any size in the country running the local hotel's operation and synchronizing with centralized reservation systems and other corporate management systems.

The same goes for just about any type of business you can name. IBM shipped over 1 million of these machines from the time they introduced them until the present with prices ranging from about $10,000 for the smallest stripped down machine you could buy to about $1.5 Million for the high end machines.

These were immensely popular machines! In 1996 when the Internet was opened up for commercial use, the AS/400 was ready with a full suite of application servers, email servers, DNS, FTP, and just about every other server you could name or imagine to make the system immediately Internet ready! Over the years with Java, WebSphere and many other middleware additions including a tremendous amount of free open source software, like PHP , Apache Tomcat, and the Apache HTTP Server.

As the Internet matured, one IBM i base Power System (AS/400, iSeries, or System i) could do the work of many Linux, Unix, or Microsoft Windows based machines. The system was also well known for its incredible reliability.

So, you say why on earth would IBM want to kill this golden goose?

As always with a major company like IBM its all about money! Yes, IBM made a lot of money selling these machines! Unfortunately the features that made it popular with customers (all the integrated features like its built in DB2 database) made it horribly unpopular with IBM executives.

Lets look at some basic features of OS/400 or IBM i as the current Operating System is called. It includes support for 5250 terminals. There was a feature on IBM mainframes that you could not buy but had to pay a permanent perpetual monthly license of $1500 for a product called CICS that did exactly what the 5250 system did.

There was a version of IBM's DB2 database bundled with OS/400 or IBM i that when sold on other platforms would cost upwards from $250,000 plus annual maintenance.

There were many other features built-in to OS/400 including the language compilers and development tools that were sold separately on other IBM hardware platforms. IBM Software Group truly hated OS/400 as they could not sell many of their products because much of what they sold was built into the system.

IBM just recently attempted to increase their annual maintenance fees by approximately 25% and were stopped by some major customers! They offer free open source Linux on the same machines. They will not support the RPG programming language on any other platform even though it would take no more than 3 days to to port it to run on any machine IBM supports including Microsoft Windows based PC's! RPG and every language running on the AS/400 or follow ons has always been hardware independent. The compilers generate something called W-Code that is available on all IBM supported machines. RPG, COBOL, BASIC, C, C++, PL1, etc. all generate W-Code which is then translated into machine code to run on the machine on which it is compiled. There is a W-Code processor in existence for every IBM supported platform.

IBM i on Power and its predecessors alway seem to get in the way of selling IBM software, hardware, or services.

Services is a huge revenue focus for IBM. IBM has the world largest consulting practice of Microsoft system engineers! No one can engineer a multiple server Microsoft based system better than IBM! It will cost you an arm and leg, but they are the best in the world. Same goes for Linux! IBM can build you a server farm of Linux servers spread around the world and allow you to add or remove systems with no one other than a few administrators knowing about it. Oh, yeah, it takes a bunch of expensive IBM engineers to put that together and make it work.

With IBM i you roll in a system turn it on, load data, software, and use it. There is no way you can justify expensive technical consultants! It just does its thing! You do not even need a full time system administrator!

I mentioned hardware. When you are building a complex network of IBM xSeries (Microsoft Intel based servers) scattered around the planet, you need a bunch of machines performing specialized tasks. The same goes for Linux! As your system grows you buy more Linux or windows based machines.

With LInux and Microsoft you need a bunch of consultants, a bunch of machines, and a ton of expensive IBM middleware. You feed three divisions of IBM! Sadly with IBM i on Power System you buy a relatively low cost machine virtually no middleware (you really don't need any middleware), and no consulting.

Also take a look at the cost of machines. I entered the world of the AS/400 in 1990. At that time my company had purchased the largest AS/400 that IBM made at the time for close to $1 Million dollars. From that time, every time IBM shipped new hardware they added tremendous capacity and we moved from the top of the line machines to the middle, then into the lower end of the line of machines. From 1990 to 2005 our machines dropped in price from $1 million to about $100,000 a drop of 1/10th of the original machine cost with processor speeds and overall throughput of at least 10 times the original machine.

We did not need dozens of servers, we needed one! We really splurged and added a second identical machine in a remote location with replication software to provide high availability. We spun off virtual partitions for our test systems and did not need dedicated test machines.

I just completed a project with a Linux based company where they bought about 30 Linux based Intel machines just to support our test environment!

Are you getting the picture? IBM i is just too cost effective and efficient. It can be supported by too few people with no need to bring in high powered (and high cost) technical experts. You don't need a bunch of middleware and can run your systems on basic IBM supplied software or free open source software.

Today the only thing you pay on an existing system is the annual maintenance fee in order to get support. You only need that if you like talking to an IBM support rep on the telephone. You can still get all of the IBM PTF's and fixes free by downloading them from IBM's web site.

When you upgrade, your IBM license clearly states that IBM cannot charge you for a new version of the operating system.

Are you getting the picture? IBM HATES IBM i with a passion! It costs them millions of dollars of revenue in virtually every single area of the company! So its not one or two IBM executives that hate IBM i but virtually every executive in Software Group, Server Group, and IBM Consulting!

Is Your Business At Risk?

2013-03-29T07:43:00.000-07:00

If your business is still using IBM AS/400, eServer iSeries, System i, or IBM Power Systems with the IBM i operating system, your business may very well be at risk.

The following whitepaper: Are Computers Putting You at Risk? Identifies the issues you may be facing and why you need to conduct an objective assessment of your systems and IT staff.

RPG Programmers a Vanishing Breed

2013-03-09T12:08:00.000-08:00

I wanted to get an objective handle on the future of IBM i and RPG language. I have been telling folks that it is time to move away from RPG or put your business at risk and of course the RPG folks are saying NO ITS NOT TRUE!

The reality is that the RPG programming language represents a usage of less than 2% of all of the program code written and the population of people with skills to write RPG are equally narrow.

Here are some statistics to back this up:

Tiobe Software Programming Community Index February 2013 - RPG 0.247% of all languages
The Transparent Language Popularity Index - March 2013 — RPG .175% of all languages
PYPL PopularitY of Programming Language Index — RPG NOT LISTED
Programming Language Trends - O’Rielly — RPG NOT LISTED
ComputerWeekely.com job listings RPG NOT LISTED

Note: COBOL is rated at .515% by Tiobe which is 5 X that of RPG!

The most popular languages are:

Language	Data Sources
Language	TIOBE	The Transparent	PYPL	Job's
JAVA	18.387%	17.717%	27.100%	20.653%
C	17.080%	17.391%	8.300%	1.654%
Objective-C	9.803%	10.426%	6.100%	15.352%
C++	8.758%	5.885%	9.400%	3.053%
C#	6.680%	4.708%	9.500%	6.361%
PHP	5.074%	4.583%	14.400%	22.434%
Python	4.949%	4.059%	9.600%	4.071%
Visual Basic	4.648%	6.605%	3.600%
Perl	2.252%	2.158%
Ruby	1.752%	1.954%	2.700%	8.736%
JavaScript	1.423%	1.271%		8.227%

The message here should be crystal clear! If you are using RPG based systems you need to replace or convert them quickly. You have two big points of risk:

1. a lack of RPG programmers in the market place with skills to maintain your systems,
2. the probability that IBM will withdraw support in the near future and you will have no support.

IBM Increasing IBM i Cost of Ownership

2013-03-06T10:13:00.003-08:00

I wrote a short note about IBM increasing the cost of SWMA (Software Maintenance Agreement) for IBM i. Now look at the cost of the Hardware and more importantly disk storage. Compare that to Intel based hardware and DASD for those boxes. You can buy 1 Terabyte Drives for Wintel machines for as little as $75 retail at Best Buy. You will pay much less through commercial vendors. These same drives cost you thousands for your IBM i based Power machine.

See: http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh030413-story01.html

Does your company really need an IBM Power System? Would you be much better off looking a cloud computing and pay for what you actually use?

IBM increases SWMA 22% on IBM i

2013-02-28T09:34:00.001-08:00

IBM is raising SWMA (Software Maintenance on IBM i)

Take a look at IBM's new pricing for Software Maintenance.http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh022513-story01.html (see http://tinyurl.com/ceshxkx for tier level mapping)

This applies across the board to all versions of the OS. Note that $7,000 per core on P30's and above is a lot of money for software that is not enhanced much or an OS that has had its development team cut drastically over the past several years.

IBM is sending a very clear message: use LINUX! Consider the following:

Why on earth would anyone pay over One Million per year in support for IBM i? Even the small machines are outrageously priced! If you do some rough manipulation, this will bring IBM about $30 Million per year. Considering they have less than 100 people working on IBM i at a cost of under $10 Million that is one nice profit! As long as you pay they will keep the OS alive!

Unfortunately, paying customers are dropping rapidly.

Hello guys if this isn't a wake up call I can't imagine what is?

IT Jungle Indicates IBM after Linux

2012-06-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

Timothy Morgan Prickett's June 11, 2012 article titled "Why IBM Is Trying To Surf The Linux Wave With Power Systems" is an excellent article filled with outstanding statistics for both revenue and market share covering the rise of Linux in a declining server market.

While this sounds like something new for IBM it is really old news with some great new results for IBM's Linux business.

For IBM i users and more importantly managers and executives of shops using IBM i you need to take note of Tim's article and other facts. Here is a quote from the Wikipedia: from a page titled simply "IBM"

IBM has been a leading proponent of the Open Source Initiative, and began supporting Linux in 1998.^[54] The company invests billions of dollars in services and software based on Linux through the IBM Linux Technology Center, which includes over 300 Linux kernel developers.^[55]

Today there are less than 100 people within IBM working on IBM i. I would guess the number is even lower than that. Note the new Power Linux machines that are designed to compete with Intel machines and give IBM a shot an market segment that they have never been successful in (the under $10,000 server business).

IBM invested over $1 Billion in Linux back in 1998 and helped convert Linux from "an interesting idea" to a highly competitive market leader. IBM realized that proprietary operating systems like IBM i, zOS, and AIX would not survive. In 1998 Microsoft was dominating the server environment with millions of installed Windows based machines. It was clear that IBM could not dominate the world with Operating systems any longer. Every year revenues from its mainframes and midsize machines was shrinking due to their dependency on proprietary operating systems (zOS, IBM i, and AIX). At the same time, IBM's xSeries servers running Windows was growing.

The investment in Linux was designed to stop or limit Microsoft's growth and dominance of the operating system market place. This strategy has been extremely successful. While Microsoft still has millions of installed servers in its customer base compared to thousand in the IBM i, and zSeries market base, IBM now has a universal shot of selling all of its hardware to the Linux community.

Keep in mind that while the new Power Linux machine targets low end customers, Linux runs on all IBM platforms from its largest mainframes to its smallest Intel based servers and across the entire Power Systems line of machines.

IBM does employ about 300 people as indicated above dedicated to developing the Linux Kernel but this is a fraction of the cost of the several thousand developers that used to work on IBM i (over 5,000 back in 2006), zOS (unknown but over 1000), and AIX (again unknown but over 1000 at its peak). Add that up, 300 people versus 7,000 to 10,000 people? Hmmm... Sounds like a bargain to me, especially if 2/3 or more of those 300 Linux developers are in India or China!

If you think there is a future for IBM i read Tim's article. Buy and read the IDC study upon which this article is based!

Look at the economics behind the IBM Plex initiative. This is a way to drag IBM i customers kicking and screaming into new technology and sell them SAN's and other integration based technologies and mainstream the environment with Microsoft and Linux technology along side IBM i applications. Plex is a great way to begin to move away from IBM i without pulling the plug right away.

My business is to help companies like yours develop a strategic IT plan that meets your business requirements, assesses the risk of existing systems. Call me to discuss how we can help you develop a business oriented IT plan for the 21st Century.

Bob Cancilla
Telephone: (916)690-8276
email: bobc@rjcancilla.com

More Evidence that IBM i is on its way out!

2012-05-23T09:57:00.000-07:00

Check out Timothy Pricket Morgan's article published today in IT Jungle. If anyone is listening, IBM is making it darn clear that Linux is the future strategic operating system supported by IBM on all of its hardware platforms. the new PowerLinux machines (based on IBM Power technology used to run IBM i) now costs a fraction of what you pay for nearly the same machine that runs IBM i.

Add to that the comparison between the cost of LINUX (free) and that of IBM i or AIX (mega bucks) and the message is clear! Get off RPG and IBM i or AIX and move to LINUX!

IBM supports Linux first and foremost on all of its hardware platforms including Power Systems, xSeries (the Intel servers that run Windows), and its mainframes (the zSeries). Note that while IBM still supports zOS on the mainframe they encourage customers to move to Linux with many cost effective incentives.

IBM i is a bit of a different animal. A large number of IBM i customers have 3rd party vendor software that they bought along with their original AS/400's. Many of these vendors have not modernized and continue to sell and support 25 plus year old RPG based systems.

How long can you afford to run IBM i? AIX customers get nothing but a huge benefit by switching to LINUX which is a relatively easy task for them.

If your not figuring out how to get off the IBM i you better get started and do so now.

Security and IBM i

2012-05-09T18:59:00.001-07:00

Recently I saw some old BS about how secure IBM i based systems are and I just have to respond. First of all with all due credit to the OS system developers at IBM, IBM i is by far one of the most secure operating systems there is with minimal exposure to the types of hacking found in the LINUX, UNIX, or Windows world where access is gained by exploiting vulnerabilities in the OS.

Today, the statement that IBM i is completely secure and cannot be hacked is pure unadulterated BS! It can be hacked much easier than most folks could ever imagine. Every since IBM introduced support for pointer manipulation in RPG and other ILE languages, they opened the OS to hackers. It is still very difficult and not worth exploiting.

BUT ... why would a hacker bother with the OS when huge numbers of IBM i based shops leave the front door to their systems wide open over the Internet?

There many exposures ranging from failure to change the password on key system profiles so a hacker can just login as QSECOFR or other powerful profile. A little more difficult but not much is the ability to run SQL INJECTION attacks on thousands of web pages that your developers probably don't even know are exposed.

I recently did a Google search on "IBM i hacked" and got 3.7 million results. The old BS that the IBM i has never been hacked is pure myth. I personally know of several including a major bank, a major automobile manufacturing company, and several retail operations.

If my word isn't good enough them Visit Help Systems web site (they now own PowerTech one of the largest IBM i security companies) and get their "State of IBM i Security - 2012" and read it for yourself.

The study reveals that:

81% of systems unknowingly compromise their library security
66% of systems don’t monitor network access to their data
74% of systems give users too much power.

In other words most IBM i shops are extremely vulnerable to security penetration, hacking, and loss of confidential customer information. All the time your IT Staff in blissful ignorance will tell you everything is wonderful and your system is hack proof.

They may even quote an incorrect statement that IBM at one time offered a Million Dollar reward for anyone who could hack an iSeries system (it was called iSeries at the time). IBM had to back off in a big way as studies quickly revealed that IBM i can indeed be hacked and even worse, most users, IT managers, and other IBM i practitioners didn't know how to provide basic protection form hackers.

There is no magic in hacking an IBM i system, you just drive through the front gates and take what you want. The door is usually open and there is usually a big welcome mat!

How IBM i is Strategic to IBM

2012-03-24T07:39:00.000-07:00

The title of this piece should be "how could IBM i be strategic to IBM" based on its antics and pricing strategies for support. Since the inception of the AS/400 where many customers bought their AS/400 as part of a software bundle from a software vendor that sold them an accounting system, a banking system, an ERP system, or other turn key system many of these customers did not buy support from IBM for OS/400.

IBM shipped close to a million machines but was only able to track those on software or hardware maintenance. Since 2009 when in IBM's (Lou Gerstner's) infamous "wisdom" IBM began selling equipment through 3rd party "business partners" they totally lost track of where these machines were going.

IBM offered its customers the world's best customer service and PTF or ability to get fixes offered by any vendor at any time. All you had to do was sign up and have your machine go get ptf's from the on-line system. Now you would have thought that IBM would have tracked the registration and that would have told them who had machines wouldn't you? Well, various organizations in IBM don't talk to each other very often so the support organization obviously does not talk to the sales organization or marketing. Bottom line they don't keep the data.

Many companies (I know I did when I was a customer) bought 24 x 7 support for OS/400, i5/OS, and IBM i. Many companies with many systems used to buy support for all of their systems.

IBM saw the number of customers with support (SWMA - the support contract for OS/400) diminishing based on the number of machines shipped Many business partners provided their own support.

IBM in their infinite wisdom began increasing the price of support for OS/400, i5/OS, and IBM i until it became a huge expense item that every customer questioned. Customers who would traditionally buy support for all of their machines (and this includes customers with 1500 plus machines in their stores or branch offices) scaled back to one or two machines with a support contracts. They felt they could recreate any issue on these machines and work with support to resolve it then push the ptf's out to the rest of the system (via Operations Navigator and other tools built into the system).

Just this January (see Timothy Pricket Morgan's article in"The Four Hundred" on how IBM plans to "encourage" users to upgrade to v7.1 of IBM i from V5R5 or i5/OS.

IBM frequently talks about 125,000 machines in use world wide today. That may be true and it may not. I do not know and I can guarantee you IBM does not know and only a fraction of those have support contracts. Some of these "customers" are still running OS/400 V1.3 which was the original OS they got when the vendor sold them the machine along with a turn key software package.

So lets see, you see sales diminishing, revenue diminishing what do you do? You increase support costs! BRILLIANT!

Before joining IBM I was among a group of serious customers that were advocating a $2,500 and a $5,000 IBM i based machine. We felt that IBM could have gone after the Windows and Linux market with OS/400 or i5/OS and cleaned up on volume alone. I got a million BS replies about IBM costs which turns out to be internal funny money costs and not hard dollars. Anyway it never happened and today we see a rapidly declining market where IBM increases costs and drives customers away from the machine.

The only economic salvation for the IBM i operating system is the embedded DB2. I priced a comparable DB2 system on LINUX on the exact same machine that was running IBM i and it would have cost about $250k less some discounts.

The other side of that is that many customers are moving to Oracle and the open source MySQL on Linux. Oracle's public commercial enterprise price list shows the Oracle Enterprise database at about $23,000! There support is a fraction of what you would pay for IBM SWAMA on IBM i.

Contact us. We can help get you off this wonderful but dying machine that is costing you many times what alternatives (even on the same hardware you have today but using Linux).

UNIX or LINUX Applications on IBM i?

2012-02-26T09:45:00.000-08:00

I just saw a post on a forum that advocates the use of PASE running under IBM i on your Power Machines to install and run Unix or Linux based applications.

Does anyone besides me see the lunacy of this type of recommendation? PASE was a fantastic environment and was used back in the mid-1990's by IBM to port web based applications like DNS servers, mail servers, and other open source UNIX or LINUX based Internet servers to the iSeries (name at the time). Interestingly enough PASE contained a full blown POSIX (read UNIX) system with full XWindows support as well as all of the UNIX facilities. The only problem with PASE was that it required specialized knowledge of PASE's implementation under OS/400 and the product ran under OS/400 adding unnecessary overhead on top of the PASE environment.

Today your IBM i operating system (OS/400's new name) runs on IBM Power machines. This same machine will enable you to create an AIX or preferably LINUX based machine along side your IBM i virtual machine. You can easily access the IBM i DB2/400 database form the LINUX or AIX machine and your UNIX/Linux applications will run substantially faster under the native Linux OS than in the PASE environment under IBM i.

The folks advocating this nonsense cannot even advocate leveraging IBM i skills as running apps under PASE requires extensive UNIX skills to do the job correctly plus IBM i skills making the person that does that a bit of a technical freak and extremely expensive. In addition to application developer you need an IBM i administrator who is also a UNIX administrator... Good luck on that one.

Why not run these apps under LINUX and get an LINUX expert to manage the system?

Also, if the UNIX/LINUX application is a vendor based application ask if they will support it running under PASE on IBM i! They will most likely tell you that they will not and that you are nuts for even thinking about it!

PASE was a great environment when you could not run native AIX or LINUX virtual machines on the same physical box and when you could not share DASD or other resources that have all since been rectified on current IBM Power machines.

Come on folks get real! If you want to stay with IBM Power machines then get with LINUX. IBM spent $1 Billion in 2001 to get Linux established. They are currently spending more money each year on Linux support with approximately 300 dedicated IBM employees working for the Linux foundation. Linux runs on ALL IBM platforms including the xSeries, Power Systems, and IBM's venerable zSeries mainframes.

Wake up and look at the realities. RPG is extinct., COBOL is rapidly dying off, and Java or C++ are the development languages of the future with programmers contracted from off shore outsourcing companies.

Move to the Cloud?

2012-01-31T11:02:00.000-08:00

Is it time to put your old trusted IBM i based war horse out to pasture and move to the cloud? Most of the major traditional IBM i or OS/400 based software vendors have versions of their software that run on modern Linux or Windows platforms. There are now vendors such as Logica in the UK who offer secure reliable cloud based platforms to host these applications and more importantly guide you through the migration from your IBM i based version of software that is probably a few releases back from the vendor's current software running on modern systems.

Are you running WebSphere applications? Should you be? Proprietary (and expensive) application servers like WebSphere have given way to Apache Tomcat. You should be able to run your Java based apps on Tomcat with an improvement in productivity and a major reduction in cost.

I personally recommend moving your applications to a cloud based hosting company, engage professionals to help manage migration to your existing vendor or a new vendor's software.

It is sort of ironic that today many IBM i based companies who originally selected the AS/400 as a turnkey machine, complete with hardware and software to run their business now have a highly customized and extended set of applications that has grown their IT staff from zero to many.

What are you IT folks telling you? That RPG will be here forever that IBM will keep the IBM i OS forever? Are they telling you that you are sitting on a powder keg that can explode at anytime WHEN not IF IBM withdraws support for IBM i and the RPG programming language?

I've been working with European companies who put the best interests of their companies first over their own careers. They are with very few exceptions working to modernize and move to Linux or Windows based system and many are doing so in a combination of public and private clouds.

Clouds are pretty amazing. You can buy additional capacity when you need it to handle peak period demand on your systems. All reputable cloud vendors have automatic load balancing and replication to multiple physical data centers so that if there is a local outage your systems automatically switch to the remote site. In fact if you are a geographically distributed organization you will most likely have applications running on systems in many locations.

There is no system maintenance! It is the responsibility of the cloud vendor to keep both their hardware and software current with the latest vendor fixes and insure that they have stable reliable operating environment. Translate that to read you do not need system support people.

The total cost of cloud based operations is a fraction of what you will pay in terms of hardware, software, and people to maintain and support your own Power Systems IBM i based environment.

There was a linkedin topic that reports that going rate for an IBM i system administrator is $90k per year plus in most parts of the United States. So figure about $120k total cost. That is a lot of money for any company, but especially smaller companies with small IBM i based machines! This is a totally unnecessary expense in a cloud based environment.

Some cloud vendors can offer IBM i based systems so that you can move your systems to the cloud immediately and eliminate the costs associated with owning your own systems. You can then work with the vendor or other vendor to begin migrating to a Linux or Windows based solution for long term strategic systems.

There is absolutely no reason to own your own hardware or operate your own data centers and infrastructure today! You can save thousands to millions of dollars running your systems in a cloud.

Call or email me (see: http://www.rjcancilla.com/ContactUs.html).

How do your employees feel about your AS/400?

2012-01-14T08:15:00.000-08:00

My wife was shopping in a major well known jewelry store this past week. The employees apologized profusely for the difficulties in looking up her account and resolving an issue. The system was an old AS/400 (IBM i on Power) based system running. It was using a 5250 based user interface and the employee and her manager were totally frustrated in the difficulties of performing what should have been a simple task of looking up a customer and reviewing recent sales to the customer!

I checked into a hotel that was using an IBM i based system. We had a price quote that was not matching the information that the desk clerk had in his 5250 based system. He asked his manager to help and they still couldn't find the information we had. Since we had a printed confirmation they honored the rates that had been quoted, but they had to call corporate to get help entering the overrides into the system.

I began moving the company I was working at the time to the web via Java and WebSphere and subsequently WebSphere portal back in 1995 and implemented our first web based applications in January of 1996 when the web was opened for commercial use. Many AS/400 customers have yet to move to the web. They are still using green screen 5250 terminal based applications written in RPG.

I call these companies AS/400 companies and it really doesn't matter that they may be running the latest version of IBM i on IBM Power system computers. The reality is they are stuck in 1987 or prior.

The real issue is customer and employee frustration or satisfaction. In today's world of instant messaging, video conversations, movies about everything, and the ability for computers to connect to each other around the globe, to be stuck with a green screen menu based system with all of its training requirements and complexity is nuts.

Where is the benefit? What is the cost of supporting these old systems? What are you paying the RPG programmers that maintain these systems?

Isn't it time to move into the 21st century? Isn't it time for systems that work for you instead of holding you back?

Visit us at www.rjcancilla.com and see how we can help.

Figures Don't Lie -- Look at these Job Statistics

2011-11-21T08:22:00.000-08:00

If we look at Indeed.com and their job trends based on evaluation of job openings, we see the graph depicted below with the grim facts.

This graph is based on the number of open jobs for these languages. If anyone believes that the iSeries and RPG programming has a future, this pretty tells the story. If you are a business executive in an IBM i based shop you need to act now before you lose you current staff and cannot replace them.

Take a look at what we do and how we go about it at www.rjcancilla.com. Maybe we can help.

Goodbye to Sam Palmasano?

2011-10-26T10:12:00.000-07:00

Well, finally Sam Palmisano is retiring as IBM CEO! Good riddance! This man following in his mentor's footsteps (Lou Gerstner) has done absolutely nothing to further IBM as an industry leader and has probably darn near destroyed any vestiges of industry leadership that IBM once may have had.

Under Sam's leadership, he has totally shifted the focus of IBM from hardware and software to consulting. He has sold off the IBM Printing Division, the PC Division, was involved in eliminating the System i Division of the Systems and Technology Group! He has been a huge advocate of IBM's ill defined Cloud venture! His head is in the clouds, but IBM sure as heck can't figure it out.

How is that Amazon, Google, Oracle, Yahoo, Microsoft, and others have operational clouds and IBM is still talking about them?

Take a close look at his replacement. While it is interesting and very PC (politically correct) that he is being replaced by a woman, she (Virginia Rometty) is cut from the same cloth as good ole Sam. She was responsible for integrating Coopers & Lybrand into IBM Global Services. She was Sr VP Sales and Marketing most recently.

If anyone has any doubt about the future of IBM i, this pretty much seals its death warrant and close the coffin. Hell it may close the coffin on the IBM that we once new who helped commercial enterprises figure out and manage computer systems!

i in the Sky? Cloud based IBM i?

2011-09-07T09:05:00.000-07:00

Symetry has announced its "i in the Sky" cloud hosting program for SAP running on IBM i in a cloud based environment. While this appears on the surface to be a good thing for many SAP on i customers by eliminating the cost of running your own hardware and the people to support it.

I am quite sure that Symetry has excellent people and support staff and can offer a great service to its customers. I also think that this instead of prolonging the life of IBM i will hasten its demise. If a significant number of customers move to this cloud environment, they will significantly reduce the software maintenance fees paid to IBM that keeps IBM i alive.

If I am right, then what? You are stuck on a dated system running in a cloud where you are the prisoner. SAP offers cloud based hosting on Linux and Windows. Why not go with a solution that offers you longevity and eliminates the risk of being a captive of a single vendor on a proprietary system. You can move a Linux based system to anyone of well over 100 cloud hosting company, with a dozen of the largest providers in the business offering services.

Buyer beware!

IBM i Manifest and Maxava iFoundation

2011-08-26T12:40:00.000-07:00

On March 31, 2011 Alan Campbell, CEO of Maxava a dedicated IBM i ISV announced formation of the Maxava iFoundation funded with $50,000 to be given as grants to non-profit organizations dedicated to promoting the IBM i operating system on Power Systems (click the link to see details).

While the phrase "a fool and his money are soon parted" comes to mind, this is actually a very clever manuever to milk the last dollars of revenue out of a rapidly declining market. You can see more at their web site and praise from the sheep being led to the slaughter at the Linked In group: IBM i Manifest Americas Group. Maxava is a New Zealand based company headquartered in New Zealand specializing in IBM i high availability. They must be commended on some major marketing innovations like a monthly software subscription instead of the traditional upfront purchase with annual maintenance charges.

Maxava must be commended for not only surviving but flourishing in light of IBM's acquisition of Data Mirror Corporation in 2007 that opened the doors for IBM to integrate and sell its storage systems hardware to the IBM i based community. IBM's acquisition virtually wiped out LakeView Technologies and Vision Solutions who were the leaders in IBM i high availability and data replication.

Maxava will probably recover their investment in the foundation with new customers who see Maxava as somewhat of a hero in trying to preseve the IBM i market. I personally think it is a good move that will enable Maxava to retain slow to migrate (to modern technologies) companies for at least 10 years out.

Have you followed the IBM i Manifest Americas group you will see a rather pathetic group of folks both vendors and IT folks trying to promote IBM i awareness and education in spite of the fact that IBM has totally withdrawn all marketing support for the product and reduced a major division of the company to a single product (i.e. an operating system) that runs on Power System machines which is dominated by Linux which is their strategic OS.

I know I was stunned and shocked when IBM announced that it was shutting down its System i organization in 2007. Keep in mind that IBM reduced IBM i development from over 5000 people to less than 100! The lab in Rochester, Minnesota is a ghost town with much of the facility leased to other companies. IBM still manufactures Power Systems machines at this location as they have manufactured the RS6000 for years. You won't hear too many folks talking about IBM i in Rochester these days however.

It is laughable to think that a group of individuals can do what a major corporation will not do. Once again I close by saying The IBM i is finished. It will not be resurrected. It is time to move or at least make sure your applications are platform neutral and can be moved to a new operating system when the time comes and it will! Do it now while you have the time.

IBM's Strategic OS

2011-08-25T09:29:00.000-07:00

Developing Operating Systems cost money!

OS/400 at its peak had about 5,000 developers working on it in Rochester, Minnesota. Today there are about 100 left. There were thousands of developers working on zOS and AIX. All of these operating system have reached their peak and have maxed out in terms of both new sales and support revenues for IBM.

On an industry scale Microsoft Windows is the dominate operating system with over 90% of the servers in the world running Windows. Linux is second followed by all of the UNIX versions then all others including zOS and IBM i bring up the rear. You cannot find IBM i or zOS in any public studies of OS usage any longer. Nintendo and Sony rate higher than these OS's.

IBM is focused on LINUX. Linux is rapidly replacing proprietary Unix operating systems like IBM's own AIX, Sun's Solaris, HP's HP-UX, AT&T's BCD Unix, etc. Linux is free, it is open source, and it runs on every single platform that IBM builds. Application programs are totally portable, unlike Unix.

IBM xSeries (their Intel servers which also support Windows), Power Servers (which also supports AIX and IBM i), and the zSeries (which also supports zOS) all support Linux.

IBM can make more money providing services and support for Linux than maintaining the expense of developing operating systems. IBM will focus on virtualization technologies that allow them to maximize the utilization of a single machine and sell enormous SAN's (Storage Area Networks) with Terabytes of data storage spread across multiple locations.

Note that IBM's WebSphere brand is also going by the wayside. It is also being displaced by open source software.

IBM has found that providing services for existing open source software is much more profitable than developing and competing with open source.

HTML support in RPG?

2011-08-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

Someone posted a note on linkedin.com wishing that RPG could produce HTML as easily as it can the 5250 data stream. Funny enough, HTML support was added to DDS back in about 1996 (I don't remember what release of OS/400) but its there. It required the use of a facility called the "Workstation Gateway" which was never popular, but it was certainly available.

This was never a popular solution as it was extremely restricted in its capabilities, lacked JavaScript support and mainly because RPG developers were not willing to learn HTML.

Comments like this are typical of the current generation of RPG Programmer (the majority, not the few really good people). It points out three key issues:

These folks are not willing to learn anything new unless their company offers it between 8 to 5 and does so in a conference room at their office.
These folks will never buy a book with their own money and lift a finger to learn something on their own time.
Even given the training by their company, they will resist change and argue that this new web stuff is not as good or important as their good old 5250 interface.

Someone commented in the same thread about IBM's push for Java and WebSphere. They also said that the Apache server was on Linux. Well folks get a grip. The Apache HTTP server has been shipped with OS/400 and now IBM i since 1996 when it replaced the native IBM HTTP server. This provides pure HTML support with a CGI interface that allows you to call RPG, COBOL, or any other program that runs on IBM i.

If you want to use Java and don't want to spend a fortune on WebSphere you can install the free open source Tomcat server from Apache.org.

If you want state of the art web development and the ability to call RPG or any other program on your IBM i machine use PHP. Its free, and can be learned by most people in less than a week. There are addon's to PHP like JQuery that give you full interactive Ajax support and thousands of free applications you can download, use or customize. That includes everything from complete eCommerce systems with shopping cart and credit/debit payment support to dozens of industry specific applications.

I was not a big fan of PHP when IBM introduced it on the iSeries. I don't think much of the language from a technical standpoint, but... It is enormously popular and runs on virtually every web server under the sun. It is also available as part of virtually every web hosting package.

I use it on my own web site that I pay about $120 per year to Network Solutions for. Go figure. It includes all of the software I need plus mySQL with a huge allocation of disk storage.

While I am certain that IBM will withdraw IBM i as a supported operating system when the support revenues reach IBM's magic number (less than 5 years IMHO), I was a huge advocate of using the iSeries for eBusiness and it is an emensely capable machine.

This constant crying from RPG types who probably don't use the features of RPG IV is extremely annoying. The OS (IBM i) provides robust support for just about any type of modern web application you can dream up. Are your people smart enough to use it?

This was my pet peeve both as a customer and as an IBM'r! Most IBM i customers have no clue what the system can do. We hear the same old same old BS about RPG this and DDS that. How many shops even used the incredible built-in error handling or message processing support?

HTML support for RPG? Well guess what! HTML support embedded in DDS has been their since at least 1996! Try reading a manual once in a while or at least the memo to users when IBM announces a new release...

IBM i Manifest Americas

2011-08-24T10:40:00.000-07:00

I just noticed a new discussion thread on Linked-In called IBM i Manifest Americas which is a discussion about how to market and promote IBM i. I know this group is a bunch of well meaning (some not so well meaning but desperate vendors) who want to wish that IBM would invest in and sell IBM i based Power machines.

Sadly folks just don't get it. IBM's strategic operating system is actually LINUX. Look at the zSeries! IBM no longer pushes zOS, but rather pushes Linux on zSeries. Power Systems sales folks will push Linux over IBM's own proprietary AIX flavor of UNIX!

You can buy Linux to run on IBM xSeries (Intel based PC servers). In other words the IBM i OS is history! The Power machine is most definitely strategic, but not the IBM i OS nor the RPG programming language which only runs on IBM i.

Do these 500 plus folks posting marketing ideas in this thread actually believe that they can influence IBM and change its direction and save their operating system?

IBM's iSeries died when IBM shut down the System i brand and eliminated an entire division of IBM Server & Technology Group. Dream on folks, but IBM i is nothing more than a way of milking the last drops of revenue from an install base that shrinks daily.

Get real and figure a way to migrate your applications to LINUX or Microsoft Windows! Doesn't anyone ever think about the company they work for any more? These folks seem to be fighting to preserve their jobs and little more.

Both Linux and Microsoft Windows are today equal or actually better than the old rebranded OS/400 now called IBM i. Note that with the exception of modifying OS/400 to support the sale of disk technology there has been no change to the OS and no enhancements in several years. The change that have been made are to better support virtualization on IBM disk technologies including SHARK and other SAN's. Also to support running IBM i on Power blade servers.

Move now -- the end is near.

IBM i in IBM 2010 Financials

2011-07-29T07:19:00.000-07:00

I just came across a break out of IBM Revenue posted by Bob Djurdjevic on his Annex Research web site. The link above is the data source that I obtained from his site and added the percentages.

The URL for the full report from Annex Research is:

http://djurdjevic.com/2011/Bulletins2011/ibmseg10.pdf

This report is extremely significant. It shows that IBM i revenue has dropped to 3/10ths of 1% of IBM total revenue or 282 Million out of 99.9 Billion in revenue. Note that hardware sales once what IBM was all about has dropped to number 3 at 18% of total sales below Software 22.5% and Global Services 56.5%.

A statistic that IBM remains very quiet about is the fact that xSeries or Windows based Intel compatible servers dominate server sales with a whopping 5.4 Billion or 30.5% of server revenue. Contrast that to IBM i based hardware sales of 6/10ths of 1%. Note that sale of disk storage surpasses IBM's System z sales and System p is behind z.

This does not bode well at all for the future of IBM i as I have been saying for nearly a year now.
Believe what you will, but note that IBM has become a consulting company. When IBM withdraws support for IBM i, they will be most happy to sell you services to move your applications to Windows on System x or Linux on System p.

IBM is Microsoft's biggest service provider! It is also IBM's biggest business partner! Go figure...

Oracle and IBM i

2011-06-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

I just read today's blog post by Jon Paris and Susan Ganter in the IBM Systems Magazine, Power Systems Edition at: http://ibmsystemsmag.blogs.com/idevelop/ entitled an open letter to Larry.

I couldn't agree with Jon and Susan more about Oracle finally being a company that see's the light in a vast darkness of out-of-control technology foisted off on the world by IBM, and many other vendors today.

Oracle is the only company that is focused on selling business application software to medium and large companies with a complete end to end solution including both hardware and software. Jon and Susan lamented the fact that IBM has not recognized that they too have solution like this (the IBM i based Power System).

Well, not exactly true folks. While the IBM i is an excellent operating system it is far from being a complete solution for a business. IBM has not addressed application software since IBM unbundled in 1969 after losing a major anti-trust lawsuit. IBM has tried to provide applications to run on its hardware by attempting to attract business partners (vendors of application software) who developed software that ran on their machines.

Microsoft takes the same partner strategy but backs up there partner program with thousands to millions of dollars worth of support to assist partner in development, sales, and marketing initiatives.

IBM has failed to provide much of any support to the IBM i partners and while there are still many applications built for OS/400 aka IBM i they are old using old technologies and operating on support revenue.

Oracle systems run on lightweight Linux and Unix based machines that can scale from about $1500 to about $1.5 million for a high performance machine. Oracle owns the software solutions and can deliver a complete turn key product that solves business problems.

IBM seems to support old time partners like SAP, CSC, and others who have supported IBM hardware for years. IBM's total number of dedicated business partners is declining as vendors move to LINUX, various open source technologies, or Windows.

IBM's WebSphere Division of Software Group is probably in its last days of glory as vendors and customers realize that they don't need to spend a fortune on middleware software from IBM when they can obtain software that is every bit as good free in the open source community. Quite often you can run on open source software in a cloud based environment and let the cloud based provider maintain all of your middleware for a fraction of the cost of implementing IBM recommended solutions in-house.

Oracle has chosen to continue to support Java and MySQL as if they were Open Source (they are not -- they are owned 100% by Oracle when Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, Inc.). Oracle leverages open source software stacks and eliminates dependancies on costly middleware while making their money on complete business solutions.

It is a sad, sad, day, but it appears as if IBM has lost all focus on the market and is fumbling around operating on the sheer power of its size and the fear of customers to abandon old IBM technologies like IBM i...

It is only a matter of time. IBM has clearly demonstrated its cost reduction profit generation motivation with the next quarterly statement driving the company. Hey Sam Palmisano should well be remembered as the man that drove IBM to total ruin.

Why is the IBM i a dying machine?

2011-05-29T09:14:00.000-07:00

I have read countless posts in various AS/400 aka IBM i blogs, forums, mailing lists, and on linked-in complaining about how IBM didn't market the machine properly or IBM should have done this or should have done that.

Admittedly, IBM holds the ultimate responsibility for the demise of the AS/400 aka iSeries, aka System i aka Power Systems with the IBM i OS, but...

It has really been the customers of the AS/400 that have killed the machine. IBM is a business that responds to decreases in revenue by cutting costs and investing in technology that represents revenue growth potential for them.

The first big issue with the AS/400 (and all of its many names) was the fact that customers who originally bought software maintenance and hardware maintenance began to stop buying maintenance contracts. IBM made this possible by publishing all of its OS/400 and IBM i PTF's via their web site where any customer could download them free of charge. The very fact that the machine and operating system were as reliable as it was is another reason for its downfall. There are thousands of B model machines running around the world with OS/400 1.3 dating back to 1987 when the machine was first released. These machines are running vendor provided software from many vendors that no longer exist. These machines sit in a corner and just do their job.

While this a great testament to the machine and its architecture, it was not good for IBM. When IBM gives you a number of machines shipped, installed, or running they often include these machines. They get zero revenue from these machines.

The other and perhaps more important reason that the machine is dying are the programmers working for its customers. For the most part these RPG "programmers" are folks that were recruited from the file room, mail room, or folks that took a one semester class at a junior college and left their job as waitress, bartender, painter, or construction worker to become a "RPG Programmer". Most never bothered to take and introduction to data processing course or any other computer fundamentals. Many were taught by IBM SE's at the employers place of business.

These folks did their jobs most often by copying sample programs and modifying them to accomplish their businesses objectives. They were good employees and did their jobs but were hardly programmers.

IBM listened to many of its business partners (companies who sold commercial software) and more advanced customers with professionally trained developers and enhanced the RPG language and the language environment of OS/400 itself with ILE and many enhancements. RPG today is a very respectable programming language. With the exception of a lack of object oriented support RPG is as robust as any other language thanks to the folks at IBM and specifically the leadership of Barbara Morris.

A much touted benefit of OS/400 (aka IBM i) was the fact that programs written in 1969 for the System 3 still run without modification or even a recompile today on IBM's latest machines. This very positive feature eliminated the need for programmers to stay current with language and technology.

IBM also made the sad mistake of never dropping old features form the language. You can still use today's compilers and write code that looks like RPG II from 1969. There are millions of programs running on the IBM i that are basically RPG II. In fact most RPG programmers do not know how to write a modern ILE program or use modern features of the language. There are very few ILE service programs, procedures, etc.

Software vendors driven by cost control are still selling systems written in old architecture and programming style. Why change? Why modernize? Why above all spend money to rewrite an old system?

These are just two reasons that IBM i is destined for the bit bucket.

Folks Still Don't Get it!

2011-04-10T12:08:00.000-07:00

IBM's recent announcements pertaining to cloud based technology on Power Systems pretty well state the case! All of IBM's announcements are targeting Linux as the OS of choice. There was no mention of IBM i in any of its cloud based announcements.

According to Sam Palmisano, cloud computing is IBM's future. Isn't it interesting that zOS and IBM i are not included in that strategy?

IBM zSeries hardware has a unique approach to implementing Linux on the zSeries hardware. On Power, there is no need as Linux runs native on the Power machine. Oh, yeah, you could run Linux under PASE on IBM i but why on earth would you want to do that?

There is a never ending discussion thread out on LinkedIn called:

How true is true tat the younger generation engineers are NO longer keen to work on IBM AS400 ... !

Folks just don't want to admit that the end of life for this venerable machine is just around the corner. The discussion described above took a twist towards outsourcing, which is very likely the transition plan for most IBM i customers.

IBM told everyone back in the 1990's to embrace Java and move to a platform neutral environment. Remember the Code Java or Flip Burgers ad that IBM ran? Well, that has become a reality. If you are not running Java, PHP, or C++ applications on your IBM i and are dependent on RPG or native OS/400 COBOL applications, your company is in big trouble.

There is still time to fix this by using one of many viable modernization strategies, but the bottom line is get off the box, or at least get to a portable environment that will run anywhere.

Also, start thinking about the cost benefit of retaining the old loyal but very limited (in terms of capability) folks supporting your IBM i. I strongly suggest a good early retirement programming coupled with a modernization strategy that includes outsourcing to support your existing applications while implementing your strategy.

Bottom line is get off of IBM i and move to something modern or even move to a cloud based computing environment.

Look at: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/34197.wss and tell me where the reference to IBM i are for those of you die hard IBM i folks? Cloud is IBM (and the world's) future. Do you really want to spend millions on hardware and IT staff when you can get much better systems and resources for a fraction of the cost?

Vendors Withdraw Support for IBM i

2011-01-29T10:30:00.000-08:00

IT Jungle recently wrote an article saying that the world is not coming to an end just because Oracle has withdrawn support for MySQL on the IBM i operating system.

Well, I'm hear to tell you that is a major sign that the end is near. Microsoft has been aggressively attacking the platform with extremely viable alternatives for several years including the implementation of plan to attack IBM i software vendors and get them to use Windows technology.

Oracle was one of IBM's biggest software partners. Its PeopleSoft line of products, JD Edwards software, etc. all ran on IBM platforms with JD Edwards being one of Oracle's largest ERP packages on IBM i.

When Oracle announced its acquisition of Sun Micro Systems, the end for IBM i was sealed in concrete. The move by Oracle to withdraw support for MySQL is just the first step. Keep in mind that Oracle owns Java (Java is NOT open source and never has been).

I watch a number of old IBM i related discussion forums and watch the media. Sadly, IBM may believe its BS as well as many of the pundits posting to various forums (who happen to make their living from IBM i).

There is no future for IBM i and this move by Oracle is a major wake up call. If your company is running RPG base IBM i applications, move them to anything else and any other platform! There are several excellent companies that can help you move them.

Get rid of the old line RPG Programmers and IBM i focused IT folks. Just flat fire them. It is time to reinvent IT.

I think the day of developing computer programs and applications in-house is a thing of the past. I think the concept of owning your own server class computers (i.e. the IBM i, the IBM xSeries or IBM Power Sytesms) is probably a thing of the past.

This note is really addressed to managers and executives of companies currently using IBM i based hardware. Here is my message.

Find an independent consultant with no ties to any hardware platform.
Look at what is best for your business and not about technology or IT.
Take a close look at your IT organization. Do you need to reinvent it? I mean fire everyone and start over!
Reinvent computer systems support in an entirely new business model, no more programmers!

My predicition folks is that IBM will not see 2021 (I don't like predicting dates, but 10 years seems reasonable). Under Sam Palmisano's leadership one of the greatest technology leaders in the world has become a once ran vendor of old legacy stuff.

This includes the IBM i, xSeries, and Power Systems. These are all old legacy technologies. They represent a very big cash cow to IBM who continues to act as if they are the future. They will not survive.

IBM's big failure is focusing its sales initiatives on IT executives and technologists. Letting PhD's in Computer Science run the company. IBM is no longer an innovator or technology leader. While they are huge and have over $95 Billion in revenue, they cannot sustain their business model into the future. Mark my words, the end is near for this once great company.

I find this a truly sad state of affairs. Lou Gerstner and Sam Palmisano have taken one of the worlds greatest companies and brought it to its knees.

Oh well, the world changes and its time to move on.