V5R4 End of Service Date Announcement

IBM is announcing today that the effective End of Service date for the V5R4 release of the operating system (known at that time as i5/OS) is September 30, 2013.

A while back, I wrote about the questions I get asked most frequently, and I am happy that, over the past two weeks, I have been able to answer two of them in this blog. The first, of course, was answered last week when we announced the inclusion of RPG OA function in the RPG compiler and IBM i runtime. The second is answered this week, when I can finally respond clearly to people who ask “When is V5R4 going out of service?”

It’s quite understandable that people ask the question. V5R4 has been available since 2006, and with its End of Service scheduled for 2013, it will have been supported longer than any prior release. People kept expecting the end to arrive. Now we can see that end.

Over the past couple of years one of my messages in any customer presentation has been this: Clients want to be able to remain on releases longer. Why? Primarily because the move to another release is disruptive, even if the actual process of upgrading is relatively simple. And yet, it’s also important to move clients forward. Within IBM, we’ve been listening to all of our various constituents to determine the right time to end service on this good, but aged, release.

We’ve also been listening to clients tell us that they need a good amount of time to plan for that end. By announcing it today, we are giving our partners and customers over 19 months to prepare for and move to a later release.

I’ve been giving presentations, and participating in webcasts, with the topic of moving up to POWER7 and IBM i 7.1 for quite some time. And, by the way, a very large number of clients have listened. There are more clients on 7.1 now (about 21 months after its GA) than there were clients on 6.1 at the same point in its history, and this has been possible because people who upgraded from V5R4 took advantage of the ability to skip a release – to upgrade directly from V5R4 to IBM i 7.1.

Also included in the announcement is a statement of direction to offer a Service Extension. Sometime within the next year, you can expect to see a specific announcement about that, but the idea is that clients who simply need more time will be able to get it. However, the extension will cost more than their current software maintenance, and clients who buy it will not get new features or even cumulative PTF packages past the September 20, 2013 date. You can get details on this, as they are available, from your business partner. IBM will be educating business partners with the specifics as they are defined.

Over the past year or two, I have heard many customers and ISVs say that they really need to have an official V5R4 End of Service date. Some organizations will only consider a move to another release when their current release has that end date. So, despite wanting the great new column-level encryption support, or image management support, or performance improvements, they need the impending end of service to push them that last little bit toward an upgrade.

For this reason, I expect to spend the next year or so fielding questions like “What’s in IBM i 6.1? How about 7.1? How can I learn about moving up? What about that “retranslation thing? Where do I find the technical documentation for IBM i 7.1? And what about the latest news and post-7.1 features?”

I don’t worry, though, because we have the answers. If I don’t have them personally, I know the people who can get them. And I look forward to bringing these clients the news about the great new capabilities they will have on their new IBM i release.

For those of you already on a later release, stay tuned. We are not done announcing things. Not by a long shot.

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Twitter: #ibmi, @Steve_Will_IBMi

 

Comments

[Joe Pluta]

Thanks, Steve. This is indeed something we've been looking forward to, in some cases with great trepidation, for a long time. You talk about how easy it is to move to another release and generally speaking that has been true. The move off of V5R4 is significantly different because of the re-encapsulation issue; the lack of v6.1 support for some vendor software has kept a few folks from making the leap.

So now it's time to make a decision. If you use third party software and your vendor hasn't moved to v6.1 by now they may never do so. So now there's a line in the sand: you have 19 months to find a replacement.

[Rob Berendt]

I took another look at
http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/i/planning/upgrade/suptschedule.html

Did you know that the last time we had ANZOBJCVN issues was migrating from CISC to RISC? However there was less than 4 years from GA of the last CISC release, V3R2 and it's end of service. V5R4 will have almost twice this.

Yes, I did change multiple vendors because they were dragging their feet. My maintenance money is not solely there for paying off their mergers and acquisitions.

[Steve Will]

Joe, I think it will make sense for many customers to look for alternatives, if their software vendor is not supporting 6.1 yet.

An additional consideration is this: now that an End of Service has been announced, those vendors might finally be motivated to "move up." And if you are happy with the vendor's solution except for the fact that they are keeping you back on V5R4, you might be able to go back to them now and get a different response.

If your vendor is interested in keeping your business, they might want to engage our ISV enablement team to figure out how to get past the retranslation step. If so, the e-mail address is [email protected]

We'll point them to the "Getting Ready" redpaper - http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/redp4293.html - but there is additional help they can get by talking to the ISV enablement team.

Thanks for the comment. We are expecting some of the ISVs who have not engaged with IBM for a long time to want some help.

[Jon Paris]

The biggest barrier we saw to the 6.1 move Steve was the cost of obtaining observable versions of software. Often just one or two programs that contain the software license key checks etc.

I have no problem with a vendor wanting to make something for supplying an observable version of a program or two - but the amounts some were asking was nothing short of daylight robbery. Thankfully the Rochester ISV group helped negotiate lower figures in many cases.

[Steve Will]

Jon, it's true that vendor costs for observable versions were sometimes unreasonably high. There might still be some vendors in that position -- I guess we'll have to work with them (customers and IBM) if they are still out there.

It's also true that some of our common clients were trying to save money by letting their ongoing service contracts expire with vendors, and then when the customer finally went back to the vendor for this "service" they were shocked at the price tag for returning to service.

I guess this relates in some respects to the subject of the blog you and Susan wrote this week. Businesses have to be responsible and realistic - to plan for ongoing expenses associated with modern software & systems. And vendors need to price things in ways that don't alienate our clients.

The e-mail address I gave above can also be used to request help from the ISV Enablement team if a vendor is being inflexible. But really, negotiations between the vendor and customer often do not require IBM to be involved.

[Aaron Bartell]

Thumbs up from me on this move. It is a good thing for all the reasons you've mentioned and I think IBM has been more than fair in how long they've let V5R4 live.

My dev team finally got on a V7R1 machine and we are loving it for a variety of reasons.

Keep up the good work!
AaronBartell.com

[J Taylor]

I'm not going to celebrate this announcement, since it will likely be the deathblow for our current server, but I have to agree with Aaron that IBM has been very generous with supporting v5r4 this long.