The State Of The Power Systems Base 2024: The Operating Systems

February 12, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

What stays in the field longer? The hardware or the software? Well, if you are talking about the IBM i installed base, or indeed that of any legacy systems out there like z/OS or Windows Server, the hardware can often be upgraded easier than the software and so it tends to not stay in the field as long. On average, of course.

In the real world, it all comes down to specifics. And you have to analyze and interpret the trend lines very carefully so as to not jump to the wrong conclusions.

So it is with the decade long progression and procession of operating systems that we have been tracking through the annual IBM i Marketplace Survey put together by Fortra. We like to look at the raw data that comes in from the several hundred IBM i shops worldwide and then use this data to extrapolate it to what we think is a more accurate reflection of what the entire OS/400 and IBM i base is up to when it comes to hardware and operating system installations. We admit there is a lot of witchcraft involved in creating our models, but in the absence of a lot more data and a longer time horizon, we have no choice but to make some assumptions and then see where they lead us.

Last week, we talked about the state of the installed base for Power-based servers at the OS/400 and IBM i shops of the world, and this week we are going to talk about operating systems. The Forta survey asks customers what vintage of IBM Power Systems machinery they have in their companies, and allows for them to have multiple responses because companies often have multiple machines with different Power processors at their heart. The operating system data that the Fortra survey asks for is for the primary operating system at the company and it does not allow for multiple responses. In many cases, the same version and release of an operating system can be installed on machinery of different vintage, so the actual installed base of OS/400 and IBM i operating systems may not skew that much from the primary operating system distribution gathered each year.

Then again, it might. We can never be sure – not without a lot more real data, of which IBM is the sole source. And there are things that even IBM doesn’t know because, as we have stated before, we think that about three quarters of the 120,000 companies worldwide that use the OS/400 and IBM i platform are what we lovingly call laggards. Meaning they either chose to or have to hang back on the hardware or software technology and who may or may not even know what machine they have in their datacenter or datacloset. These companies do not tend to read newsletters or take surveys, and many of them don’t pay IBM for Software Maintenance and write their own applications. And if they do use third party software, the code can be from a long time ago and also not supported by their suppliers.

We also think there are about 30,000 active IBM i shops in the world, meaning they keep their hardware and software reasonably up to date, they pay for maintenance on their machines, they use modern programming and database techniques, and they read newsletters and magazines and some of them take part in annual surveys.

It is our contention that the data gathered by Fortra accurately reflects these active IBM i shops, but that at any time in history the laggards look more like the OS/400 and IBM i actives from seven to five years earlier. The stretch between active and laggard seems to be getting shorter, which we infer merely from anecdotal evidence from the customers and resellers we talk to. We cannot claim this is perfectly statistically valid, but this is the data we have to work with.

We know that given that Power8 machines are going to be sunsetted this year and that IBM i 7.3 is in extended support, which is crazy expensive, and that IBM i 7.1 and IBM i 7.2 are very long in the tooth indeed. You can get a shiny new Power10 machine for what one or two years of extended maintenance costs on IBM i 7.3. We know that a lot of companies last year moved from Power8 and IBM i 7.3 to Power10 and IBM i 7.4. And while it doesn’t look like it, the raw data reflects this. We also know that a certain number of customers moved to Power9 and IBM i 7.4 and a smaller number moved to Power10 and IBM i 7.5. We also know that some very old Power iron running IBM i 6.1 or even i5/OS 5.4 and OS/400 V5R4 moved up to more current hardware and software.

Anyway, here is the latest data along with the prior four years of data from the Fortra survey:

Remember, this is data from a survey done in October 2023 that is put into a January 2024 report. So it is reasonably current.

You can see easily in this bar chart that the N-1 release tends to grow to a certain market share of around 50 percent, plateaus, and then starts to decline over the next few years. You can also see that older releases tend to hang around in the low percents.

We like to see longer trends, so here is the ten years of primary operating system data for the IBM i base in a line chart:

We had to dig in and do a sub-distribution on the IBM i 6.1 and older versions and releases, a breakout that was done in the 2020 and earlier reports but which were consolidated in the 2021 and after reports.

We would love it if this chart above represented the whole base. IBM i 7.4 would be half of the base, IBM i 7.5 would be 20 percent, and in the span of two years the IBM i 7.3 base would have dropped from more than half to down to 20 percent. IBM i 7.2 and earlier releases would be dwindling fast.

But alas, we don’t think this is the case with the IBM i base, given our actives and laggards theory. This one, we think, is more accurate:

Here is what the 2024 distribution of primary operating systems looks like as a pie chart, if you want to get a better feel for it that way:

And finally, here is what we think the primary IBM i operating system count is for 2022, 2023, and 2024:

We think there is a lot more vintage iron out there running a lot more vintage IBM i releases. The good news is that, even with our model, the IBM i 6.1 base has collapsed in ten years from a very big high, and while IBM i 7.1 did a rapid peak to almost 50 percent by 2022, going into extended support has collapsed that base pretty fast and customers have moved up to more current IBM i 7.2 and IBM i 7.3 releases.

Even the raw data shows IBM i 7.4 being flat year on year, and our model shows it upticking a little. We expect to see a lot of upgrades to Power10 and IBM i 7.4 this year, and we also expect to see that IBM i 7.3 peak go straight back down as customers who moved to Power9 with IBM i 7.3 move quickly to Power10 and IBM i 7.4. We shall see. But we think the security vulnerabilities with older IBM i releases – indeed, with any operating systems like Windows Server and Linux – mean customers will start to get more current than they have in the past.

Thoughts?

Remember: If you missed the 2024 IBM i Marketplace Survey webinar, you can see the survey results and listen to the commentary from various luminaries here, and if you want to read the written report accompanying the survey results, you can download that there.

2 thoughts on “The State Of The Power Systems Base 2024: The Operating Systems”

Roger Pence says:

February 12, 2024 at 2:51 pm

Timothy–what’s your take on US versus the rest of the world usage? Most of our US customers do a pretty good job of keeping up, but many of our European and Latin American customers are wayyyyy behind–and very nonchalant about it. They hand-wave any concerns and say, Yeah, someday we’ll upgrade. Maybe.”

- Timothy Prickett Morgan says:
  
  February 12, 2024 at 3:46 pm
  
  Anecdotally, I think that is correct. I would need to talk to more business partners to get a better read on it. Perhaps I can get a breakdown of the data from Forta by region.

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