The Long And IBM i Road That Leads To Your Door

March 11, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

It is hard to find a modern platform that has such a long heritage as the machine on which your company’s business runs. Depending on when you want to draw the lines, the IBM i platform running on Power Systems iron dates back to the System/3 in 1969 or the System/38 in 1978 or the System/36 in 1983 or the AS/400 in 1988. No matter which line you want to draw, that is a long time for a continuously upgradable and upgraded operating system and database platform combination and its underlying hardware.

Not only do the predecessors of the IBM i platform reach far back in time, but the roadmap extends far out into the future. How far? How does 2035 and beyond strike you? The state of the art in operating systems is not moving along as fast as other areas up and down the stack.

We would be the first to admit that the pace in change of all operating system kernels and stacks has slowed down over the past four decades. While the number of features might still be more or less the same, the features are, in general and with some obvious exceptions in each OS/400 and IBM i version and its subsequent releases, a bit less dramatic. The state of the art in operating systems is not moving along as fast as other areas up and down the stack. This is as true for z/OS, Unix, Windows Server, and Linux as it is for IBM i.

We are not sure this is a good or bad thing, it is just a thing.

Based on the current IBM i roadmap, we expect the next IBM i release, shown as iNext in the chart above, in 2025 and then, if history is any guide, and it most certainly is, then the iNext + 1 release will come in 2028. We think that these releases will be called IBM i 8.1 and IBM i 8.2 and will be launched concurrently with the Power11 and Power12 processors, and bringing some sort of sense to the naming conventions for the Power chip and the IBM i version and release that comes out concurrent with it. (8.1 on Power11 and 8.2 on Power12, etc. . . .)

This other part of the roadmap certainly backs up the idea that different versions/releases are expected in 2025 and 2028, as shown here:

Again, speaking generally, standard support is available for each release for seven years and usually across three or four generations of Power processors. IBM i 7.1 was supported across Power6+, Power7/7+, Power8, and Power9 processors, with only limited support on Power9 iron. IBM i 7.3 was supported on Power7/7+, Power8, Power9, and Power10. We don’t consider the “plus” versions of the Power chips different versions, but are more akin to a software release. The architecture was tweaked a little with the “plus” chips and the change is usually a process shrink on the chip manufacturing process.

This is about as an aggressive roadmap as we see for any platform, and the only roadmaps we see published.

Windows Server 2022, the most current Windows Server, came out in 2021 and will be supported until 2031. Windows Server vNext, which is now known as Windows Server 2025, was just revealed in January of this year and will presumably ship this fall and be supported through 2034.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux releases come out every three or four years and have seven years of standard maintenance and extended maintenance that another six or seven years beyond that for a total of thirteen to fourteen years. RHEL 8 launched in May 2019 and will have support through May 2029 and extended support to May 2032 and RHEL 9, which came out in May 2022, will have support through May 2032 and extended support through May 2035. Obviously, Red Hat has a more generous extended support than IBM i or Windows Server – heaven only knows what extended support on either costs.

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