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.

Future of IBM i?

Lots of heated activity on the AS/400 forums on Linked-in.  It seems to come down to the realists and to those whose livelihoods are locked into the platform.  Folks who sell products or services, or developers with no other path but AS/400 aka iSeries aka System aka IBM i on Power defend the platform regardless of facts or fiction.

Here is a link to Google search hits on various AS/400 aka IBM i related terminology.

Here is a link to jobs by various system names from major job search sites:

This one is my favorite.  It is the number of Google hits when restricting the search to the IBM.COM web site:

Here is one I just did searching on programming languages including RPG!  For the RPG programmers out there, read it and weep.  For managers, business owners, and executives with a large install base of RPG code, you better take some action to replace your RPG code!

Note that Java is the clear leader by all of the search firms and languages.  Microsoft's Visual Basic dwarf's RPG today!

So what do all these numbers mean?  It means that while IBM continues to support the IBM i operating system on its Power line of machines, it is not marketing or promoting the OS.  No one is selling IBM i, and the programming population of RPG developers (RPG runs only on IBM i) is diminishing.  On the linked-in forums you will see recruiters posting jobs for RPG folks and having tremendous difficulty filling the jobs.  The average age or RPG programmers is approximately 60!  These folks are retiring.

The bottom line is that sentiment measured by hits on Google is that the majority of folks dealing with computer systems have no interest in IBM i or have never heard of it!

Once again, I don't recommend pulling the plugs on you IBM i or OS/400 based machines, but taking positive action to protect yourself and free your company of the dependancies of RPG or IBM i aka OS/400.  Be prepared to move to another platform (be sure you can move), and the hold out for IBM to withdraw the OS.

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?  

How much has been "modernized?"

This was a question posted on a linked in forum recently.

"

How much has been "modernized?"

There's been a lot of talk for at least the past 20 years that systems would be "modernized." "We're going client-server & unplugging the mainframe." Still hasn't happened. Now c/s is legacy."

My assessment would be that very, very little has been modernized. We have the world leading analysis tool for the as/400 and of our thousands of users world-wide, less than 10% have done any real modernization. Most as/400 (and this is true of mainframe applications too) are large, complex beasts that are implemented for the most part using legacy languages and legacy architecture. Converting the language is not that big a problem, and automation tools have been around for decades to do this. but largely what they do is create legacy applications in modern languages. there are some real justifications for doing that on occasion, but not to reap the benefits of a modern application architecture, and development agility. 

To get a real modern application and the modern development benefits, you have to rewrite the legacy application. The problem with this (certainly on the as/400) is that the majority of legacy developers don't have the will, time, opportunity or capability to transition their own skills let alone a 10 million line mission critical application. Some have but not enough to create a pool of resource that would make any difference. 

Modern developers and often managers don't have the knowledge or experience of the business, and even if they did, the cost of rewriting manually is prohibitive and could take many, many years, and hugely risky. 

So the result is kicking the can down the road being the most prevalent attitude i see worldwide. Not that some management aren't interested in doing something, they just haven't had the means or method. 

To change this, automation is the only answer. Not automation by code conversion or even intelligent code conversion to produce neater legacy code in a modern language. Automation of reusable design recovery, complete transformation of the architecture and rewrite of the code. The drivers must be developers with a modern perspective, not legacy developers with modern skills, but a legacy perspective. so it should be a "harvest what we can from the legacy " rather than carefully preserving legacy in a modern language. The three aspects of automation that are required to effect this radical change are:

- Automation of complete system design recovery reusable designs/rules/models 
- Automated Transformation of architecture 
- Automated Generation of code 

The most productive part of automation is design recovery. It is also the part that has achieved the highest degree of automation(with our tools anyway). If functionally delivered in the correct way (graphical, interactive, drill down, models, flows, exports to UML/XML/DDL) it also solves another big inhibitor to modernization: putting the power of knowledge in the hands of new developers and management, and often legacy developers too (finally they can articulate what they have been doing for the last 25 years). 

Subsequent automation of transformation and code generation provides varying degrees of automation and cost benefits. But even modest levels of 50% can save 10’s of millions of dollars and years of risky effort. Projects done with our tooling have already delivered 80-95% automation of a manual rewrite. 

Most significantly we are seeing a release of pent-up frustration by companies who know the problem, know how it could be solved but couldn't find a technology that could deliver the solution with any real automation. 

I don’t believe that this will change the mentality of the many can kickers, who just want to see out their retirement in peace. It does mean that new and future developers/managers can harvest the value in their legacy systems, once the old guard has stepped down.

How bad is your RPG Code

I've recently participated in a number of discussions that appear on various forums discussing RPG, its future, and value.  Frequently these discussions are led by highly skilled professional programmers who utilize the latest features and facilities of RPG and write good structured modular code leveraging procedures, service programs and advanced features of ILE.

I absolutely agree that the most current version of the RPG language has the capabilities of being a superb procedural language and can offer the best structure and results that one could expect from a procedural language.

After thinking about this and looking the realities of most IBM i shops, the simple reality is that most shops do not have programmers of the quality of the folks that write these arguments favoring RPG.  In a weird tribute to RPG, it is a language that can be learned, used, and implemented by people with very little training and a virtually no background in computers, technology, or systems.

In fact the vast majority of RPG programmers were blue collar workers without college degrees or training who learned RPG in in-house IBM sponsored training classes, Junior college courses, or 3rd party taught classes. 

The vast majority of programmers have never written an RPG program from scratch (i.e. an empty SEU or RDp file) but rather copy and modify existing programs, sample programs obtained from IBM redbooks,or articles in various books, magazines, and publications.  Few of these sample programs were examples of good code.

Over the years (and many of you have programs that were originally written 40 to 50 years ago and modified numerous times over the years written by people with all sorts of skills.

Cleaning or replacing this code base is the challenge faced by most IBM i customers.  Some vendors including IBM advocate code conversion to EGL (enterprise generation language) or Java.  There are many vendors who offer conversion to other language including various Windows technologies.

Straight conversion can cost as much as $1 per line of code resulting in project prices of several million dollars.  Conversion projects are extremely risky as the vendor will convert your code from RPG to another language, but they are not responsible for testing or insuring that the new language based system still works and performs well.

Most companies have hundreds of thousands of lines of redundant code, code that is never executed, or should otherwise be cleaned up and improved before any conversion is undertaken.

Some vendors (including IBM) advocate using their conversion tools to convert 5250 green screen applications to web based applications.  They argue that you can enhance the web presentation after the conversion. 

Vendors like IBM or the many others have superbly skilled programmers and architects.  They have no experience with corporate systems built and modified over 40 to 50 years and really have no idea what a company's system portfolio contains.  They would be shocked and horrified at that 12,000 line monster that drives one of your critical business applications with  the User Interface, business rules, and database access as well as control logic all embedded somewhere in the beast (along with commented out code from previous generations and code that can never be executed).

I recommend use of tools like Databorough's X-Analysis along with a rigorous methodology that mandates restructuring and modernization of each program as current projects require the program to be modified.  I also advocate a rigorous program of peer review carefully organized to insure that your very best programmers are reviewing others code. 

If you don't want to invest in X-Analysis, then use Hawkeye or at a minimum use DSPPGMREF to an outfile and write some programs to produce reports on the structure of your systems. 

Once again, it is only a matter of time until IBM drops support for IBM i and therefore RPG (which only runs on the IBM i operating system).  You have time to modernize and replace your RPG based systems but you need to start now.  When IBM does drop support for IBM i they will generally support it for 3 years after they announce that the product is discontinued.  Even then you can still run your systems and tools as long as you don't need to upgrade your machine or operating system. 

The key is to realize that IBM i and RPG will eventually be withdrawn and support discontinued by IBM.  They are offering their own tools to convert to Java and modernize now.  You need to take the path that makes most sense for you, but you need to move on this.

Will complacency kill IBM i?

While most westerners rejoiced the recent events of unrest and social reform in the middle east, i am sure many also asked "what took them so long?"

When I tried to answer the question myself about why a large group of intelligent, educated people would accept such leadership, and along with it a stranglehold on their innovation and freedom for so long, i realized that all communities fall into that trap at some stage. Its called complacency.

The IBM i community is no exception.

Think about it for a moment. there has been no real innovation our of IBM i that is directly relevant to the IBM i community since the 80's. in fact there have been some serious misdemeanors on their part. here's a couple: ILE - what's the point of that? if you going to go OO, go OO, don't just poke at it with a long stick! a friend of mine who worked on the RPG compiler team at that time told me that there was a real plan to go the whole way, and truly modernize RPG, but it was vetoed by management. here's another: webfacing - no further comment needed. what about WDSc? basically it destroyed your PC just to get a notepad style code editor up! no wonder people still use SEU. EGL? Great idea, even pretty good implementation for IBM, totally pointless in reality. Scenario: "Hey IBM i have 5 million lines of RPG, and aging work force. i love the platform and IBM. what should i do? answer: Rewrite your entire code base in a language no one uses, using a work force that doesn't exist. huh?

What exactly is a third party vendor? I have asked this question of many people, Mike Smith (ex IBM Chief Architect), Jon Paris, myself, Rich Hume, end users, developers, ISV's, in fact anyone i can ambush into listening to me. The answer it seems is: "not IBM"

So what IP grew the IBM i community to its current size? Firstly of course OS/400 and RPG. But from that moment on: MAPICS, BPICS, JDE, System 21, SYNON, LANSA, PRMS, essentially third party vendors. or rather "not IBM".

There are many in the IBM i community that would skip a system i news mag article about the science of business rules recovery of RPG systems with X-Analysis because it is labeled"Advertorial", in favor of 15 pages of how RDi miraculously helps them edit the one program they write per year these days. Similarly there are some who whinge to Jon Paris about third party vendors lowering the tone of his events and events like his.

the last few publications and events that remain as the conduits to the IBM i community, and who still support the "not IBM" mantra as a given are thankfully giving way to more viral and real communities such as we see on some linked in groups.

I don't think complacency will kill the IBM i community, but hopefully it will kill the bovine leaches who are too lazy to listen to anything but the PR drivel that mostly comes from IBM these days.