IBM leaves integrated, others pursue integrated

The longer I work with RPG+DB2+OS400 and compare it to other stacks, the more I love it for the integrated aspects.  There are a number of IBM’ers that recognize the benefit of integrated, but I think those are relatively few compared to those that have jumped on the “Java is integrated” band wagon (which Java is pitifully not well integrated in OS400 if you ask me).

The reason for this post is because there is yet another HUGE initiative going on with big players (i.e. Microsoft and HP) to put together a more prepackaged system that is meant to ease the pain of integrated technologies. Timothy Pricket Morgan writes about it here.

Here’s what I think… If IBM were to give RPG a couple face lifts here and there (i.e. clean up the syntax and maybe add some more “meta data” features), make IBMi available in the cloud for incredibly reasonable prices for hobbyists and small businesses, and put together a marketing strategy around that, well, I think we could see a *start* to regaining ground instead of losing it.  I am not saying everyone would jump ship from RoR and .NET and JSF to this infrastructure, but it would at least be a viable option.

It just pains me to see IBM always wanting to swim in the same pool that everybody else is peeing into instead of staying in their own pool where they have decades of infrastructure built that can give them serious competitive advantage.  The crazy part is that they are competing against the company (i.e Oracle) that now owns their savior roadmap language and corresponding tooling (i.e. Java).  Doesn’t anybody else see this as awkward?

On a lighter, and final note; I learned that if all you have is a single square of toilet paper to blow your nose with, well, you can make it work! :-)