Saturday, August 31, 2013

Who are the IBM i Customers?

There is quite a myth out there that IBM i is the machine of the SMB market.  Well that is true in terms of IBM's definition of SMB which are companies with over 50 employees and annual sales well in excess of $30 million.

There are some well known large corporate accounts that support their franchises with turnkey packages that run on IBM i.  There are also huge companies with field offices that have a machine in every field office.  When you see quotes from vendors or partners about the number of small Power Systems IBM ships with IBM i it is very likely to a company that has a small IBM i based system in every store, warehouse, factory, car dealership, agent's office, etc.

The truth is that IBM has targeted mid-size companies for the AS/400.  Additionally the vast majority of these customers primary software is a solution purchased from an independent software vendor and not software developed in-house by the company's IT organization.

Many of these companies who have 1500 or more machines (one in every business location) are looking to lower cost alternatives including Intel based systems (Windows or Linux), variations of Unix (SunOS, HP-UX, BSD, or other variation) .  Some companies are looking at cloud based solutions.  The bottom line is that a huge part of the IBM i install base had been location based systems.  As companies migrate to lower cost solutions this will have a major negative impact on IBM and its revenue from IBM i on Power.