Why IBM i ?? NEED YOUR INPUT
Hi All,
Was on a call with IBM and the YiPs team yesterday. They are looking for ways to liven up, and modernize, their message about the benefits of the IBM i. The cool thing is that the folks on the phone weren’t your traditional marketing folks but people that have grown up with the machine and actually BELIEVE it is one of the best platforms for business today – specifically the IBM i OS.
Justin Porter, Brian May and myself (the YiPs on the call) gave personal stories of our experiences with IBM i and why it has saved us time, money and accomplished business goals over our professional life on the platform. Our comments ranged from being able to trust the system to grow during busy seasons without interruption or increasing staff, to only having to apply updates based on business feature needs vs. security vulnerabilities, to the simplicity and efficiency of modular application development with RPG+DB2+IBMi.
At the end of the conversation we realized that there are a lot of believers out there that could share similar stories to benefit the evangelizing of the platform. So what is your IBMi success story? What is something you love about IBMi that you don’t get with Microsoft or other OS vendor?
Please note your answers will be forwarded to IBM, so flavor your responses accordingly. If it is possible, please include your company name and your role.
Thanks,
Aaron Bartell
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I want an IBM i because i’ve always wanted to pay 20k for a single core machine with 4GB of RAM.
So if I were to translate that maybe you would say: “Charge only for where there is more value – specifically for the operating system, the database, the compilers, and software. Don’t overcharge me for hardware or make me lose my warranty if I buy memory from somebody else”
I know that is a frustration of yours (and mine), but it isn’t something that will provide any benefit to this marketing effort. Now that we have the gripe out of the way, what is something you believe the IBMi excels at over other alternatives?
I use Windows on the desktop. I use OS/400 for the business. I use RPG because that’s ‘the’ IBM i language. I don’t know what more to add except that I plan on working in the i space for another 20 years.
The most important reason for customers to use the i is it’s low requirements for support personal and maintenance. Unfortunately, this does not contribute much to one of IBM’s current main revenue streams. It’s also not a great revenue generator in terms of software sales, partially because the system is so stable over time. And, software sales is IBM’s other major revenue stream at this time. So, although a great system from a user perspective, it kind of stinks in terms of generating IBM revenue.
The trick, as I see it, is to figure out a way to present the IBM i in a way that will present a win-win for both the IBM corporation and customers. And, that’s a trick that I have not come up with yet although I know it exists.
There’s also all the other reasons why the i is so great. It supports the entire spectrum of business needs from front end internet (PHP, HTML, XML, etc.) and green screen input/output to back end process and database support. It runs UNIX aps in addition to native applications and allows Windows servers to run in the context of an advanced, ‘kick butt’ server environment.
Perhaps there are some stories about how all this integration makes for great business cases and the stories can be presented in a way to show how IBM can use it to enhance it’s revenue streams.
I started to use AS/400 now IBM i in 1999 soon after my hi school education and fell love with it. Did most of things around IBM i, RPG, CL, Java, PHP, Modernization etc… In fact I have married to a RPG family (My wife is a RPG programmer and her father too)
I have 2 IBM i running with me and never come across a unplanned downtime, data loss, unwanted restarts etc… simply the machines are running fine.
Best thing is the RPG and DB2’s bond, don’t have to wary about the DB and no need of a DB admin like other platforms which I love most.
Many things to write about why I like/love IBM i, but lets keep it simple, as Buck mention above I have plan to work in the IBM i arena for next 30 Years (if I live that long)