It's a Good News Week!

Good news? Really? Looking at today's news, it is hard to believe there is any good news to be found. But this spring is indeed bringing a much needed batch of good news to the IBM i community.

What news? Well we are currently at the WMCPA annual conference and are absolutely delighted to see that attendance is at a much higher level than it has been in recent years. Not only that but they have set new records for vendor and sponsor participation.

From here we go directly to Dallas for our spring RPG & DB2 Summit. We are also seeing a significant increase in attendance for that event. Indeed, we ran out of space for exhibitors and even closed registration recently for fear that overcrowding could impact the comfortable, interactive feel of the event.

We are also hearing similar good news from organizers of other upcoming conferences like NEUGC and TUG TEC. From what we hear, COMMON's spring event is also seeing a similar resurgence in numbers.

This is good news for two reasons. First, it is indicative that the economy is turning around and companies are beginning to invest again. Second, and more importantly for us, it means they are investing in their IBM i assets! And that has to be good news for all of us.

But this is no time to breathe a sigh of relief and relax. This may be a limited-time opportunity. For now, IBM i shops seem to be investing in what they have and in finding out what they could be doing. But unless we "carpe diem" and get rapidly involved in modernizing our applications and development practices we may well miss the boat. If we do not respond to the needs of the business, we will find ourselves once again having to defend against other inferior "solutions." For inspiration, take a look at our previous blog post about surprising your users. 

So now is a good time to tell you the other piece of good news. The draft version of the new Application Modernization Redbooks publication is going to be available "any day now" -- Tim Rowe of IBM just told the audience at WMCPA so it must be true. He even had a printed copy with him; it is about the size of a large telephone directory and there's still a bit more content to come.

So it is a good news week. Make the most of it -- go out and DO something!

Modernize? ... Schmodernize!!

What with our involvement in the upcoming IBM Modernization Redbooks publication, we've been paying even more attention than usual to the topic of application modernization. So when we saw this piece from fellow writer Alex Woodie highlighting a study on CIO's attitudes towards green screens we were intrigued.

This study was undertaken on behalf of Micro Focus who has long been a force in the COBOL world. In recent years, the company has focussed much of its attention on providing tooling for mainframe COBOL shops. In that regard they are not dissimilar from many of the modernization tool vendors in the IBM i space. Mainframes, COBOL and 3270s provide a very direct comparison with IBM i, RPG and 5250s, so we thought it would be interesting to see how the kinds of questions asked and the responses received matched our perceptions. Given that nearly 600 respondents from around the world completed the study, the survey size is certainly large enough to potentially provide some valuable insights.

Of course there are differences between the two platforms. Our externally described files, screens and reports mean that the maintenance burden is typically a little smaller than in a mainframe shop. Similarly updates in the RPG language have outstripped enhancements in the capabilities of the version of COBOL (i.e., the non-OO COBOL) that most mainframe shops use. That makes it a lot easier for us to deal with the programmer shortage by taking C, Java or PHP programmers and training them in RPG. We would not want to be running a COBOL shop and having to try to persuade young programmers to learn the language. That said though, we would expect many of the problems they face to be remarkably similar. A quick perusal of the survey results seems to bear this out.

For example in the section on "Why are green screen applications still used?" the results seem very much in keeping with our own experience. Some 55 percent are dissatisfied with their green-screen apps, but seem to consider the risks and costs of fixing the problem to be too high, particularly in light of the shortage of skills. Notice that this is not an absolute "there are no programmers" statement; rather it is a comment about a lack of programmers with the _skills_ to perform the task. Now where have we heard that before?

Indeed the follow-on chart highlights that most sites are likely to be using emulation products--even on phones (shudder) and tablets--than actually modernizing (6 percent) or replacing (5 percent) the old apps. We have a feeling that modernizing via intelligent refacing technology and/or Open Access based tools probably means that these numbers would be a little higher in the IBM i world but not perhaps by a huge margin.

There's a lot more of interest in this study but we'll highlight just a few more points.

First, 89 percent have had complaints from end users about green-screen applications. Those of our readers who adhere to the "sometimes green is best" philosophy might be surprised by that.

Second, some 66 percent stated that using green screens negatively affected staff satisfaction levels, with some 19 percent of them saying that impact was significant in hiring, training and retaining staff. The survey goes on to study the roots of these problems in more detail which provides interesting reading. 97 percent said that end user satisfaction would either probably or definitely increase if the green screen applications were updated.

Third, while most of the IT departments surveyed consider themselves innovative, only 28 percent believe that their users consider any updates to existing applications to constitute "innovation."

So updating the user interface to existing applications is good. But to be considered innovative, users expect more, such as mobile apps or "technology that has new or surprising features and functions" (whatever that means!).

It is perhaps a sad reflection of this crazy world that modernizing what you have is not seen as innovative. We're not sure if that reflects a lack of vision on the part of the responders or simply that having a new "Now you can 'friend' us easily from your phone" app is now considered business critical.

Take a look at the study. We'd be interested on hearing how well it maps to your own experiences.





 

Sometimes the Simple Ways Are the Best

In last week's blog, we mentioned we were in Rochester for the kick off of the new Modernization Redbook. Thanks to those of you who commented on the blog. We're still open to suggestions, so keep them coming.

This week we were inspired by the signs we saw on the sidewalk outside the Rochester Lab every time we entered or left the building. You can see one of the signs here:

We were struck by what an effective, albeit low-tech, means of communication this was. After all, in a building filled with techies wouldn't your first thought as an organizer to be to spread the news by email, or Twitter, or a company bulletin board, or ... ? But you couldn't miss seeing this one. If, like Jon, you have well-developed skills for reading upside down, you would get the message at least twice a day. Hard to ignore.

If you've never been to the Rochester lab, you should know that instead of one building with just one or two entrances, the lab is made up of many smaller buildings joined by central hallways. Most buildings have their own door to the outside with a sidewalk leading up to it. These picnic signs were placed on the sidewalks leading up to each building entrance. So someone used a lot of chalk!

Why did the organizers choose to step backwards in time like this? Well, in the early days of email, and indeed even Twitter and Facebook, sending a message of this type would have almost guaranteed that your audience saw it. Today there is so much spam and other junk mail flying around--not to mention the pure volume of mail that most of us receive--that email is a significantly less effective vehicle than it once was. Even Twitter is so cluttered with junk that spotting the useful and interesting requires either a 24-hour devotion to the feed or additional tooling to help sort the wheat from the chaff.

So, the next time you need to impart some vital knowledge to your colleagues think about keeping it simple. But be aware that if your new tactics succeed in getting their attention, others may copy you and then you may end up in this kind of hell scape!