COMMON Europe Opens Up 2013 Top Concerns Survey

May 6, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

If you have a bone to pick with IBM or just a helpful suggestion on how it might improve the Power Systems platform running the IBM i operating systems, now is your chance to do something about it.

For the past seven years, COMMON Europe has done its part to poll the IBM i user base and try to figure out what they are worried about. And now the eighth annual Top Concerns survey is open for you to speak your mind and help shape the future of this platform upon which we all make our livings. (Or at least a part of it, in many cases. Plenty of us lead hybrid lives, I realize all too well.)

The 2013 Top Concerns survey is open to IBM i customers, business partners, and IBMers, who are all part of the IBM i community. And while COMMON Europe is in charge of doing the Top Concerns survey, it is not restricted to European customers, so please do not get the wrong idea. This is a global survey and it just so happens to be a task that COMMON Europe performs on behalf of the IBM i community. IBM accepts input from regular users through the Top Concerns survey, and also solicits input from the COMMON Americas Advisory Council and from the Large User Group, the latter two being the bigwigs who have more sway with Big Blue because of the bigger budgets that these IBM i shops have. But, to IBM’s credit, it listens to all of the available channels and really does use the data gathered to help shape investment in hardware and software as it relates to the platform.

Not surprisingly, the latest Top Concerns survey is focused on mobile computing, infrastructure, application development, and security, and you can write in your own “golden concern,” which might be a pet peeve. The data gathered is tracked by region–Europe, Americas, Australasia, and Africa–and one survey taker from each region will be randomly be given an Apple iPod.

As a matter of principle I never take the Top Concerns survey–my life as editor of The Four Hundred for the past 24 years has been one giant string of top concerns, and I don’t want to sway the results. I do enough talking, and it is your turn. So go participate at this link.

COMMON Europe will be hosting its European Power Summit in Annecy, France, in June and will be polling attendees there, too, and Ranga Deshpande, Top Concerns project leader, will have preliminary results ready in July.