Rational Gives an Early Valentine With Free Open Access

They love us. They really love us! Finally IBM Rational has admitted the folly of trying to persuade us to buy our own gifts and is giving us Open Access for free.

Today's announcement confirms the rumors that have been circulating for the last few months. Namely that the OA run-time components are being bundled with IBM i and the compiler components are being included with the compiler. Of course it will all have to be distributed as PTFs for a while, but over time will be shipped as standard. We just read Steve Wills' You and i blog and noticed that our "Valentine" headline is even more appropriate than we thought because the PTFs are due to be available starting on Feb. 14!

The link we have for the formal announcement letter doesn't seem to be working right now so we'll post that in the comments as soon as we can confirm it.

We think this is a good thing for several reasons:

1. ISVs that have products that utilize OA no longer have to get customers to install an additional chargeable feature before they can even take advantage of a free trial. IBM partly addressed this by making a trial version of OA available a few months ago but it was still an impediment.
2. Smaller ISVs that might otherwise have developed handlers couldn't justify doing so since, in some instances, the cost to the client of installing OA would have exceeded what they could reasonably charge for the product. 
3. Open-source advocates were never going to embrace writing handlers that relied on a chargeable product.
4. Similarly the number of magazine articles on the subject of OA has been severely lacking. Although we have written a couple ourselves we're only aware of two or three other writers who have done anything. In fact we had given up writing on the subject, other than here in the blog. The reason is the same--there's little satisfaction in writing an article on a subject that you know most of your readers can't put into practice. Now that everyone will be able to use the examples we present we'll be dusting off a couple of ideas that we have on hold. In the meantime you can find our earlier articles on OA here and here.
5. Last, but not least, it will hopefully dispel the notion that the only thing OA is good for is modernizing 5250 applications. As we've said before, while this is a very important function of OA it's only a tiny part of what can be done with it. We need more applications that exploit email, processing IFS files, Web services, etc. OA is an excellent way to enable such features for "the masses." Even highly skilled RPG programmers can make use of OA. For example, during a recent discussion with IBM's Barbara Morris, we discovered that even though she is comfortable with using the IFS APIs, she actually finds it easier to use an IFS handler that she wrote herself whenever she needs to process IFS files in RPG.

Rational has shown us a little love here. Let's return the favor and thank them the best way we can--by using OA to add new functionality to our favorite language.

Please use the Comments section of this blog to pass on your ideas of the kind of handlers you'd like to see written or indeed to tell us about those that you plan to write.

IBM i Forecast: Very Cloudy

Back in September 2010, we wrote about our "i In the Sky"--that is, our use of the iDevCloud for our own business. We mentioned another offering, RZKH from Germany (don't ask us what it stands for!). Since it has been over a year since that post, we thought we'd revisit the concept of using IBM i as a cloud server.

IBM i seems a natural choice for cloud computing, with the advanced virtualization capabilities, powerful security and simplicity of administration. We're obviously not the only IBM i users to have noted that. We even found a piece, which would seem to have been written by someone who isn't an IBM i user, on the value of IBM i as a cloud server. In "Five Characteristics of IBM iSeries: What Makes IBM iSeries Stand Out of the Crowd," you can see what we mean. What makes us say the author isn't an IBM i user? Well, the only use of "iSeries" is in the title. The rest of the article uses the term "IBM i series," an interesting mangling of current and old names for our beloved platform. Perhaps the author originally wrote it as "iSeries" and some editor ran into Trevor Perry who insisted a global change to "IBM i" resulting in yet another name for the platform (like we needed another one!).

We recently heard from Aaron Bartell about another IBM i cloud service that also sounds interesting. Since the iDevCloud service has a prohibition on commercial workloads, it's certainly not a solution for everyone. Aaron found Symmetry Corp's offerings. The company calls its solution "i in the Sky" (hmmm, where have we heard that name before?). According to Jon it is the title of an Alan Parson's Project song on the album of the same name, but we digress. In contrast to the comment above where we doubted if the author was a seasoned IBM i person, there's no doubt whatsoever about the heritage of this offering. Despite using "i" in the name, the url to the product concludes with "/as400" and we couldn't find a single reference to IBM i (or Power Systems) anywhere except in the name. And even there, the full name seems to be "i In the Sky AS/400 cloud solutions." In the details, "iSeries" and "AS/400" were used everywhere (what, no i5/OS?). Yes, certainly a seasoned IBM i person - and apparently like most of us, never quite sure what to call the platform in order to attract the faithful  (sorry, Trev).

But naming inconsistencies aside, the Symmetry offerings seem to be quite interesting for enterprise cloud computing. The company seems to be oriented to SAP on i, which in its own right is a good thing. But don't let it scare you away if you want to distance yourself from anything SAP-ish. There are offerings here for completely "generic" use of IBM i (or as it is stated "iSeries" or "AS/400") in the cloud. We haven't seen pricing, but Aaron tells us that it is competitive even when compared with comparable Windows servers.

We can attest that our own use of an IBM i cloud server for development and education has worked out very well. Apparently we aren't the only ones who have found iDevCloud to be useful. We heard recently that they are nearing capacity on the original servers and are working on getting more capacity to meet the growing demands that IBM i developers have placed on them. Great news--not only for our friends who run iDevCloud--but even more so for IBM i fans everywhere--so many IBM i developers taking advantage of a way to build applications and play with the latest technology!

We're sure many more IBM i cloud solutions are available--not only for developers like ourselves, but for production and commercial use as well. We heard runners last week of yet another cloud service, we'll report back when we get some confirmation. In the meantime, please help us identify others by posting in the Comments section.

Show Us the Comments on “Show Me the Data!”

In “QUILNGTX: Show Me the Data!” we shared a new way to display text that removed the barrier of 52-character text limit. And we encouraged you to keep playing with it and share other ways you’ve used the APIs. Here’s your outlet. Please use the comments section below to share and discuss ideas. 

 

Looking Forward to Saying 'Yes' in 2012

We've said it before and we'll say it again--the current economic climate is presenting many IBM i shops with the perfect opportunity to prove their worth and make sure the IBM i (and they) are around for the future. A lot of the more ambitious (and often futile) major software changes are on hold. In other cases (and we learned of another such example today) the financial climate is making companies take a long hard look at the true economic realities of the "miracle" software that they have been struggling to implement. The result of such reality checks is invariably a realization that the new system has racked up at least twice the originally projected cost, uses far more hardware and manpower than promised, and often under performs. Pity that it took an economic disaster to make people realize what many of us could have told them before they started!

One successful tactic that an increasing number of shops are trying involves having your IT department act as a vendor. If you know that software/hardware package XYZ is under consideration, ask to be considered a vendor. Put together a bid and ask for it to be considered as an alternative. Even if you factor in the costs of a major rewrite of your existing applications, add the cost of learning new skills, and add in a few experienced contractors to help mentor the team and bring them up to speed on the "new stuff" we'll lay you odds that you will still come up with a budget that is less than 50 percent of package XYZ. You'll also find that you can set a project time-line that is significantly shorter than that for XYZ, and will offer greater customization for the users. You can do it. It works. After all, who knows your business better than you?

In other shops, we're seeing smaller projects emerge where IBM i developers seize the opportunity to show off "what i can do" that impresses their user communities. You may be surprised how much impact you can have by trying your hand at small modernization projects, such as producing browser interfaces to what were spooled file reports (many ways to do this, most requiring minimal modifications to existing RPG report programs) or providing an easy Web service via XMLSERVICE.

On the subject of modernization, Jon did a lunchtime seminar for the Atlanta User Group (amcu.org) today titled "Modernizing Your Applications--For Free" where he focussed on many of the free tools that we have mentioned here and in our columns for IBM i EXTRA. It was a good crowd--bigger than they've had in a while apparently--and the subject fit in well with their theme for this year's education series, which is modernization.

Jon challenged his audience at AMCU today to "just say yes" when requests come in for "out of the ordinary" application functions. Say yes and worry about how implementation. If you say no or even if you say, "Let me get back to you on that after studying the options," before you know it, someone in the Windows group will have jumped on the project or the users will have found a packaged "solution". As a result, you may well end up spending more time in the long run wrestling with integrating what they did than it would have taken to implement the project on i to begin with.

AMCU is also planning to cooperate with other user groups that are working to update their members' skills. One such group, SEMIUG (the Southeast Michigan iSeries User Group), is currently working on a collaborative project aimed at teaching members new skills while helping to demonstrate the viability on the IBM i as a modern platform. In fact SEMIUG's meeting tonight is dedicated to a progress report and anyone can join the webcast and see what they are up to. See here for details.

We applaud efforts like this and intend to work with these groups whenever possible.

Looking Back at IBM i Application Development in 2011

It's that time of year when people traditionally look back over the past 12 months and attempt, perhaps, to extrapolate from that what might come to pass in the next 12. Problem is that if the past 12 months have taught us anything it is that we have no idea what may happen next! For a start we were convinced that long before now the IBM Rational would have realized the folly of its ways and removed the charges for RPG Open Access--no such luck. But at least there's a really strong rumor that we can expect to see that happen before the spring. Please, pretty please. We'd hate to be back here again next year bemoaning the fact that it didn't happen.

That said, time for a few words on some of the more interesting trends that have emerged over the year.

Free and Almost Free
Of particular note is the increase in the number of vendors in the iBM i space who now offer their products (or at least a base version of them) for free. Still others have abandoned the notion of charging for the software itself and instead simply charge for maintenance. This is a trend we expect to see continue, and indeed grow, over the coming months. We've already heard rumors of at least one vendor that's considering offering a free "community edition" of its product. If indeed that comes to pass it has the potential to significantly shake up at least one segment of the market. 

Mobile
Mobile this, mobile that. Some days we think we may scream if we hear the word just one more time. Luckily this is a trend that makes sense. Sure lots of folks are jumping on the bandwagon, but it does make perfect sense in many cases. In particular the availability of GPS capability in most mobile devices makes tracking the whereabouts of folks such as delivery drivers affordable for even the more modest-sized business. Knowing who is where and therefore being able to re-route them to make an emergency pick-up (for example) can increase efficiency and improve customer relations. We'll be having a mobile focus again this spring at the RPG & DB2 Summit, and we're hoping this time we'll have a chance to attend a few of the sessions ourselves. Now that we have both iOS devices (iPad and iPod touch) and an Android phone we’re more and more interested in what can be done with these little devils.

Upgrading Applications and Skills
This is a long overdue trend in our opinion. Admittedly as our business involves consulting and training on modernization topics we have a vested interest, but we're seeing more and more of clients looking to enhance the skills of their development teams and make the most of the application inventory they already have. An increasing demand exists to make IBM i data available to applications on other platforms. This is a welcome trend, because two or three years ago all we were seeing was folks busily exporting data from the IBM i, manipulating it on some other box and then re-importing it. Having the i remain at the heart of the process is good to see. This kind of updating makes sense in these tight economic times. Why not make the most of what you have--both in terms of personnel and applications.

We're still not seeing as many people actively modernizing their code base as we'd like. We still see far too much of the "if it ain't broke ..." mentality but perhaps in time. It has always been a mystery to us that rather than invest $x in re-engineering their software, management will pay $y (where y is typically 20 percent or so of x) over and over and over again. And for each iteration the cost of y rises and rises. Admittedly it's tough to quantify the cost/benefit of re-engineering. All we know is that, of those we have worked with, every single one wishes wish they'd done it sooner!

Did we miss some trends you've spotted? Let us know. In the meantime, we wish all of our readers a healthy and wealthy New Year.