Bend Over IBM i Users

Bend over!!! 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?

Is IBM i still in the running?

The following article: http://tinyurl.com/aksp7hx which is really about Dell's going private puts some disturbing facts on the table for IBM i customers. 

In 2011 there were 9.5 million servers sold by Lenovo, HP, and Dell.  Note that IBM is not mentioned in a leadership position in terms of server volume. While IBM certainly is a contender in terms of dollar volumes for server sales, there unit sales are way behind others in terms of xSeries, Power systems, and zSeries.  

Keep in mind that iBM i is now just an operating system and its sales are fraction of the total Power System sales.  My guess based on my previous experience within IBM is that less than 30,000 systems sold by IBM have IBM i installed.  Quite frankly I suspect that number of machines sold in a given year is more like 10,000 (no facts to back that up), but 30,000 is the total population of machines with software maintenance.  Machines are replaced or upgraded traditionally in 2 to 3 year intervals. 

This means that IBM i sales are less than 3/10ths of 1 percent of the world's total server sales.  Even if those claiming an install base of 100,000 IBM i systems were correct (they are NOT) that is less than 1% of the total server market.  

Note that the article goes on to state that these units sold are only those from commercial vendors.  It goes on to state that companies like Google, Facebook Amazon or other giant system server consumers build their own machines using extremely inexpensive components manufactured in China.  

For IBM i to remain significant (unlikely IMHO) it needs substantial unit sales.  The economics just work against the system.  As great as it is and with all its many wonderful attributes, you have to ask how many powerful servers can you buy at $200 to $1500 for the $30,000 you would have to pay for an IBM i based Power system?