Mobile Is ... Different

To our U.S. readers, welcome back to reality after the Thanksgiving break. Hope you had a wonderful holiday surrounded by friends and family and that this week hasn't proven too much of a come-down for you.

Three things triggered this week's blog. The first was an email from a friend and client who, having just gotten his hands on an iPad, was looking for recommendations for a 5250 app. The second was an email that announced the publication of the latest part of IBM Systems Magazine's Special Report on mobile applications. This particular report focuses on security and should be compulsory reading for all those moving into the mobile universe. The third component originally came to our attention back in October at the Fall RPG & DB2 Summit where the folks from CNX showed us a preview version of their new iAdmin product. Having had the experience of wrestling with a smartphone 5250 app just to enable a user profile, we were thrilled to see this product in action. Now that it has been officially released, we can tell you about it. For those of us with older eyes and/or fat fingers this really is a great idea, and a great example of just what can be done with mobile apps. Give it a test drive from your phone or tablet at iadmin.cnxcorp.com and see what you think.

One thing that all of this highlighted for us is that mobile is different. The design issues are different. The security issues are different. And different challenges require different thinking. We might have been able to get away with designing our Web applications as giant multitabbed and (hopefully) prettier versions of 5250 applications, but not mobile apps. We need to rethink our design perspective and look for our inspiration elsewhere. The folks at CNX initially developed their new application for in-house use based on their own frustrations with teeny tiny 5250 screens (and they are all much younger than us!). What is missing in your shop? What problems could mobile apps solve for you? Things are changing quickly and embracing mobile technology may well be a make-or-break point for many IBM i shops. Because if we don't do it somebody else will.

iAdvocate Advocating

Greetings from a grey day in Paris. We had been hoping to visit the Louvre today, but it turns out that Tuesday (the only day off we have here on this trip) is the one day per week it is closed. So instead we're writing this blog. Not a good trade-off in our opinion but perhaps it makes you feel better about not being in Paris!

Our blog on advocating for the IBM i drew quite a few comments and while we have responded to some in the blog, not everyone goes back and reads the comments so we thought we'd briefly revisit the topic today.

Tim commented that: "I think Jon you need to spend some time out here in the real world, on a daily basis, dealing with real CIO's that are continually degrading the IBM i as "Old Technology". We do indeed work with many clients where there are CIOs and other senior executives that feel exactly the same the same as the ones he describes. In such cases we do our best to help the IBM i proponents in the organization fight the misconceptions and demonstrate the value of IBM i." 

Tim also noted, "... and they think IBM has given up on the IBM i, and I alone can't fight this anymore, need some support from IBM directly. ..." That really is the point we were trying to make. As individuals we can't--that's why we need to work together. IBM is helping in many ways. When it comes to dispelling the notion that IBM has "given up," how much more definitive can you get than the statements from IBM Power Systems GM Colin Parris in the "IBM i Strategy and Roadmap"? His personal introduction concludes with this statement:

"You will find that our commitment to our IBM i clients, ISVs and business partners is solid and unchanged. We continue to make substantial investments in the future of IBM i as an important, strategic element in our IBM systems portfolio." 

That document also references the fact that more than 150,000 companies are using the platform. That's companies--not boxes. The number of boxes (and therefore licenses of the OS) is indeed shrinking. One of our clients is responsible for some 20-plus of that reduction. They went from more than 25 systems to five by consolidating their workloads on ever more powerful servers.

In his keynote presentation at the Summit, IBM i Chief Architect Steve Will also referenced the white paper and a number of other studies that demonstrate not only that IBM i is the TCO (total cost of ownership) leader, but it can also be a TCA (total cost of acquisition) leader. This is an issue that Paul raised in his comment. You can find Steve's presentation here (look at the 2nd chart on P4 for TCA figures). We're working on gathering more material of this type together and will let you know as soon as it is available.

In the meantime we'll leave you with part of a comment from Yvonne E. who noted: "While I do agree the frustration is valid how does that help the topic at hand?" We couldn't agree more. Our careers are based on IBM i. Advocating for the platform makes perfect sense if we want to continue to be gainfully employed and not have to go over to the dark side.

It would be wonderful if IBM were to suddenly agree with all of us that the IBM i platform deserves to be singled out as the best business application platform. But even if Big Blue did so tomorrow, it wouldn't dissuade us from advocating for the platform ourselves and encouraging everyone else to do the same. We can't control what IBM does or doesn't do, we can only control what we do. And we choose to advocate for i.

'Survey Said ... Education'

About a month ago, we encouraged you all to vote in the Top Concerns Survey hosted by COMMON Europe, but open to IBM i users around the world.

It appears that many of you did so. This year's survey was a record-breaker  with 30 percent more votes than last year. Since COMMON Europe hosts the survey, it's not surprising that more votes came from Europe than other geographies (57 percent) while 30 percent of the votes were cast from the Americas.

And the results? The top concern from the survey was the need for education-- or as the survey puts it "Keep the skills current for existing staff." This replaces last year's top concern "Satisfy internal customers" (though this was still highly ranked at No. 3). 

While we have certainly felt the need for more education for IBM i shops, we have to admit more than a little bias in that direction! So it is encouraging to see how many of the survey respondents have also decided it is a higher priority than in previous years. Along similar lines is the appearance of "Acquire and retain qualified IT personnel" at No. 6. This is a concern that many in both Europe and North America have expressed to us over the past few months. It is encouraging and worrying at the same time. Worrying because it indicates that the lack of IBM i skills in the marketplace is becoming a bigger problem for many shops.

There are also some results in the top half of the survey that we feel could perhaps be related. Concern No. 5--Attract the younger generation to Power Systems with IBM i--and Concern No. 8--Attract senior Executives to Power Systems and System i--appear to be closely connected to Concern No. 7--IBM to aggressively market the IBM i. Although, as our post from last week suggests, we have come to the conclusion that it's far better for us to take up that cause ourselves than to wait for IBM to have a radical change of heart regarding marketing specific platforms. Who knows, maybe we'll even cause the change of heart to occur by setting the example!

Surprising to us in the results was the relatively low priority given to the three concerns related to mobile devices--even lower than implementing Web-oriented architectures. Of course, all of the items in the list have already been voted as "Top Concerns." These votes simply help to prioritize them. But the relatively low position related to mobile devices seems counter to No. 5 above it--attracting the younger generation to IBM i.

Perhaps we should assume that the reason it wasn't as highly ranked is because so many IBM i shops have already implemented mobile and Web interfaces. We can dream, can't we? Sadly it is far more likely that the sparsity of Web applications and the relatively low importance given to them (No. 10--Implement Web-oriented architectures) is at least in part responsible for the failure to attract the younger generation.

If you want to view the results in more detail for yourself and compare them to previous survey results, visit the website.

iAdvocates: Advocating for IBM i

When we were in Minneapolis for the 12th RPG & DB2 Summit last week, we experienced a couple of "firsts." For example, because it was near Halloween, we did trick-or-treating at the exhibitor booths. It was fun going around to the exhibitors looking to see who had your favorite goodies--including some childhood favorites from years past.

More significantly, we also held the first "iAdvocate Tutorial and Discussion" after the technical sessions ended one day. We had no idea how many attendees might decide to hang around at the end of a long day of sessions to learn about things they can do to advocate for the IBM i platform, both in their own shops and in the community at large. We were pleasantly surprised at the number of people who enthusiastically participated in the discussion. We had to bring in extra chairs multiple times due to the overflowing crowd in the room.

Mike Cain did a fabulous job of leading the discussion and left us with many thought-provoking tidbits as he discussed ways in which he has advocated for our favorite platform and database in competitive situations. For example, Mike asked, "What do Oracle, Microsoft and Apple have in common?"  Answer: "É the pursuit of integration."  The punchline, of course, being that they are struggling to achieve what we have had for years--so much so that we often take it for granted. It's a thought that we mused about here about 18 months ago in our open letter to Larry Ellison.

Mike Pavlak from Zend stopped by and was joined by IBMers Alison Butterill and Tim Rowe, who came up from Rochester just to join in the iAdvocate discussion. They made many excellent contributions, including the fact that many IBM i customer success stories are available on IBM's website and the fact that some new ITG studies on the value of IBM i will become available online soon.

We're currently working on gathering some of the materials discussed during that session so that iAdvocates everywhere can get help in keeping the IBM i front and center in their shops and beyond. We'll be sure to let you know when we have a website available to diseminate that information.

Many, many thanks to Mike Cain for sharing his wealth of experience on this subject in such a straightforward and entertaining way, and to Alison, Tim, and Mike Pavlak for joining in the discussion and providing pointers to additional resources. One more person to thank--Dan Burger for his inspirational piece about why we should all care about becoming iAdvocates.