ISV Resources for IBM i

Sometimes you readers are great at playing “straight man.”

A few weeks ago, I talked about the Global Solutions Directory (GSD), which helps IBM customers find ISV solutions. Well, since I wrote that, I received a question which essentially said this:

Recently a young group of web developers came to me about the cost for a small POWER7 for development. Years ago IBM had special offerings for developers. I was wondering if IBM is offering any special deals for today's POWER7 systems for IBM i developers?

This is not the first time I’ve been asked a question of this type, and the ISV Enablement team gets a version of this question quite often, so I thought “Hey, that would make a good topic for the blog.” So, suppose for a moment you know a group of programmers that wants to build an application for IBM i.  What could you tell them? Here is my answer:

All the information below relates to becoming a member of PartnerWorld. There is no cost to become a PartnerWorld member. They would need to register a company, then register as individuals linked to a company. Just visit the PartnerWorld join page. 

1. If you want to purchase a system, the PartnerWorld IBM Hardware Mall is also an option for discounts and low lease rates on systems for PW member usage. You would need to review the terms and conditions to see if this applies.

2. If you qualify as an ISV and apply for the necessary PartnerWorld membership options, you can get the software from the IBM Software Access Catalog for a discounted price. All the IBM i software and associated Power products are 100% discounted, but the Rational products are discounted 50%.

3. There is a site that allows ISVs to use, without purchasing anything, the latest hardware and operating systems. That site is the Virtual Loaner Program. There is no cost to PartnerWorld members for using this HW/OS virtual loaner program, for short reservations - a few weeks at a time.

4. If the developers would like to use the Virtual Loaner Program, but need a longer-term environment than the "few weeks at a time for free" model, we do have an incubator project to rent resources for an extended period of time (6-12 months at a time, I think.).

5. We know there are a few businesses out there offering "cloud" IBM i environments. These are not IBM companies. Examples are: timeshare400.com & idevcloud.com, though I believe you cannot develop software for sale on those sites.  You’ll have to check that out for yourself, as these are not operated by IBM.

Once you become a Partnerworld member there are a lot of resources you should explore via the PartnerWorld pages. We even have an IBM i web page.

When you have your solution developed - you will want to add it to the IBM Global Solutions Directory to provide some visibility to the product.

By the way, we are also discussing internally how we can better support start-up projects like this. We have some work going on, but for now, the above are the answers I have for you.

If your group wants to work with IBM in particular -- in a way as similar as we can get to the "special offferings" you mentioned from several years ago, you will probably want to go the PartnerWorld route. And if the developers want to talk to someone in our ISV Enablement team, contact them at iaic@us.ibm.com for further information.

 

Twitter: #ibmi @Steve_Will_IBMi 

 

Comments

[Aaron Bartell]

I have nothing but good things to say about IBM's VLP (Virtual Loaner Program) efforts - it helped me many-a-time and has been a great example of how cool IBMi virtualization can be. To document their efforts, and the effort involved in using their free services, I have written an article on the topic:

http://bit.ly/p7qjkW

Another timeshare worth mentioning is http://www.rzkh.de

It is exciting to know that IBM is doing some deeper looking into how IBMi can be utilized "in the cloud" for ISV purposes.

AaronBartell.com

[Jon Paris]

One comment on this Steve. It is a wonderful program but has a couple of gaps people should be aware of.

You have to have a clearly defined _software_ product which will be sold. Educators such as myself cannot take advantage of it because our "product" is educational materials and they do not count. Similarly a group that intends to develop open-source software cannot get membership.

You can also not use the system for production purposes - which forces some ISVs to run their web sites (for example) on other platforms as otherwise they would have to buy another system outside of the program. Of course some of them also "cheat" but we won't tell on them

It is for these reasons that we and others rent time on iDevCloud as there is no vehicle for us to obtain a system of our own other than at full price for everything,

[Chris]

Steve

As a long time ISV for the IBM i I have seen the reduction in the discounts IBM provides for ISV's. Not only that but offerings provided in some countries are not provided in others. The individual country also has the ability to deny ISV's the benefits described in the Partnerworld literature. Having said that it is good that IBM recognizes the ISV community in some way. One area I would like to see improved however is the support IBM provides to ISV's for problems, even though we have a support contract for the OS and pay our maintenance we still have instances where IBM passes the buck back to the ISV to resolve some OS issues which should be fixed by the development team. Working as designed seems to be a new mantra for IBM and as an ISV that sometimes causes us to question the "Partnership" status we have. Too many times now we are faced with coding issues to work around deficiencies in the OS which IBM says is working as designed. Being asked to log a DCREQ to fix the design issue is regular response, as a Partnership we should look at what is the most effective way to fix the problem. If you want specifics I will be happy to discuss offline.

Chris...

[Steve Will]

Again, thanks for the comments, everyone.

@Aaron - glad you like VLP -- and not surprised. A good program.

@Jon - there certainly are rules which make life harder for partners who are not specifically selling software, and then rules that restrict what these services can be used for. Clearly, this is a tough nut to crack, or it would have been done long before now. VLP is a step. The "renting time on IBM's boxes" is in its infancy, but is another step.

@Chris - glad to still have a "long time ISV" in the mix, and I appreciate the comments. I can tell you there is no order, strategy or hint being laid down to push more requests back as "Working as Designed." We try to throw all the requirements/requests in the big pile and evaluate, but it is true that we have to recognize them as a requirement first of all. I don't know how many of these are truly critical to your (and our) business results, but if you have an example or two which could really help drive revenue or lower costs while satisfying the customers we share, maybe a specific note to iaic@us.ibm.com could start a conversation. We need the DCREQ process to take place first, of course, but perhaps an example or two would help us find things that slipped through the cracks, or expose part of the process which is not working well. We should try to work on improving the channels we have -- because we have many requirements from many sources.