2016 Predictions For IBM i: Cautious Optimism

For the first time in many years, a cautious optimism seems to be creeping into the IBM i community. Driven by a somewhat vigorous Power8 server refresh cycle, which has at least given IBM server sales a pulse, Big Blue enjoyed last year the first consecutive quarters of revenue growth in what seemed like forever.

Here’s our first batch of IBM i predictions from the community, edited for clarity and brevity. Stay tuned next week for another round of forecasts.

Pete Massiello, president at iTech Solutions Group and immediate past president of COMMON

“Could 2016 be the year that the IBM i re-awakens? 2016 is going to be a very important year in the life of IBM i. We have seen IBM i move towards adopting many new open source languages, and I hope to see that trend continue. We know nothing beats IBM i when it comes to the back office processing, an integrated database, security built into the system, and ease of use.”

“IBM has stated they are working very hard on new features and functions in iNext (the release after 7.2) and iNext+1 (the release after the release after 7.2) so it looks like the re-emergence of the next promising chapter in the life of IBM i (formerly OS/400). . . . There are some very, very cool things coming to IBM i in the next few releases of the operating system. I think it’s time we put to bed the notion that the AS/400 is going away. The AS/400 has been replaced by the IBM i, and it looks stronger than ever.”

Doug Fulmer, senior systems architect, KS2 Technologies

“I expect 2016 to be another very good year for IBM i on Power. I am not seeing any pulling back by customers that want to get current on their hardware and software. We sell/install mostly P05-P10 systems, so the demise of 8202s in May will be a small issue, since there will be no ‘new’ solution that will support V6R1 at that point. We still run into a fair number of customers that run V5R4 and V6R1 and can’t move forward because of their application software support.”

“At a macro level, I would expect the installed base to remain about the same. It’s hard to see revenue at the IBM level increasing very much, just because the price/performance curve runs against them. Customers continue to buy less expensive machines to do their work. The total spend in the space may actually increase, but it won’t show up in IBM’s revenue numbers.”

“Customers are spending more on partner tools as they cut back staffing, but that helps people like HelpSystems, not IBM. Customers are looking for RPG programmers and system admins, but they can’t find them. The IBM i space has gone for years without being willing to train the next generation, and it is hurting now. We have customers hiring younger people and training them for the first time in a while.”

“The issue with IBM i jobs is that the equilibrium point is off. Too many experienced people wanting higher paying jobs, with customers looking for lower cost people, but expecting experience at that price point.”

“We are also doing a lot more managed services for customers who can’t find people at the price point they want to pay. There is an opportunity for someone that is willing to step into the role the IBM Learning Services used to handle – training people on IBM i. But I don’t know who has the time and money to do it. I keep thinking I’d like to retire some day and relax, but I am way too busy and having too much fun. I love the space, the customers and the platform. So I think 2016 will be a very good year for IBM i and Power.”

Stephen Woodard, CEO of Quadrant Software

“Customers need and want partners, not vendors. . . . Customers and IT departments are overwhelmed with modernization initiatives, application development and deployment, mobility, security, datacenter, HA/backup, disaster recovery and a myriad of other issues to attend to, and partners must understand their environment (technically and otherwise) and be trusted to provide solutions at every level, and provide services and support required for long term success.”

“Mobility has always been an important topic, but I think that the IBM i community has awoken to the fact that they need better access and support of mobile devices and applications to better serve customers, employees and to remain competitive. 2016 will be the year most shops go from researching mobile to developing mobile applications.”

“Modernization of development environments. PHP (thanks to Zend) has become the standard and along with RPG will develop the most IBM i-centric applications in 2016. We expect the early adopters to use Node.js, Python, or Ruby to drive growth of those open source technologies on IBM I, but don’t expect wide adoption in 2016. The most popular open source language will continue to be PHP and we expect node.js to see the most adoption of the other three.”

“As personnel retire, and applications become more and more business critical, customers will look to trusted partners to fill the void. And there will be continued consolidation in the industry amongst IBM i vendors to better serve customers by offering full service and solutions stacks and to gain efficiencies.”

Various executives at HelpSystems

“More new and existing IBM i customers will increase their i footprint than will migrate off the platform. Actually the HelpSystems marketplace survey supports this.” —Chris Heim, CEO

“Privacy laws and instances of the IBM i being hacked will cause shops to add multiple layers of defense to ensure compliance and protect their data.” —Carol Woodbury vice president, global security services

“Automation will become the key to survival as IT seeks to overcome the shortage of skilled IBM i administrators. Customers will further invest in HA, faster backups (VTL) and software to help better manage data growth. IBM i is the system of record, so data retention requirements from regulations are forcing our customers to keep data for longer periods. This consequently puts more pressure on backups and HA to be faster. Other investments in business intelligence, SAN and Flash, along with tools that can help pinpoint wasted disk space on IBM i, will be important in 2016.” —Tom Huntington, vice president of technical services

“IBM i modernization efforts for core applications will continue to revitalize and reinvigorate the IBM i developer community with young programmer talent. IBM i penetration testing will be a high priority for financial and healthcare companies. The IBM i user group community will reinvent itself as a nurturing opportunity for new IBM i programmer talent and as a cross-pollination venue for Windows/Linux and IBM i education. IBM i OS 7.2 and Power8 upgrades will continue at a rapid pace. With a dwindling IBM i knowledge base, companies will look to more vendor support of their systems either with additional tooling for automation and monitoring or with an outsourced model. Either way the platform will remain well integrated with the organizations strategic goals and support of back end business processes.” —Chuck Losinski, director of automation technology

Jim Kandrac, president and founder of United Computer Group

“Cybersecurity is gonna be yuuuuuuuge. Yes, it does affect IBM i. On data protection and DR, IBM i shops have a false sense of security. On mobile computing and cloud–it’s needed less due to fewer resources at client site and unavailability of new talent. Cost is not a huge issue–it can cost less or more. It’s all about resources or lack thereof. On storage, SSD and flash provide better, faster ways to store and retrieve data.”

“There will be less of a demand on high availability, unless you absolutely need it. It’s still too costly. UCG is seeing clients move away from HA due to complexities, needing to have two systems, and lack of resources. Managed service HA is heating up–but the cost is in the resources to manage. The average client is not willing to pay $4,000 to $5,000 per month.”

Nicolaas Vlok, president and CEO of Vision Solutions

“With the Power8 hardware refresh cycle now coming into full swing, I expect 2016 to be a pretty active year for software vendors focused on the i platform. The release was drawn out several years beyond IBM’s regular cycle and we are seeing demand from some customers who [were] holding out for Power8 upgrading. For the i platform to continue to stay relevant in the data center, integration will continue to be the theme, especially integrating into public/private/hybrid cloud environments. It will drag many other technologies along doing so (security etc.)”

Patrick Townsend, CEO and founder of Townsend Security

“IBM will attempt to leverage its security portfolio to better advantage. It has acquired many new applications through acquisition, but has yet to fully integrate them. Will we see X-Force work its way into security products? Will IBM Security QRadar get even smarter? I hope so.”

“IBM will attempt to execute on cognitive computing in a much larger way. It is a big bet, but I’m putting money on Watson. This is IBM’s game to lose. The Power Systems group is all-in on Linux on Power. Technology cycles can be long, but nothing is permanent. IBM may be able to bend the market back its way, but it will take a deep level of commitment. Unfortunately I am not sure IBM has the focus, energy, and strategy to stick with this.”

“The good old IBM i will be with us for some time to come, and we will see incremental new features in the area of security. We still have some really good people in Rochester on the security team. IBM i pros (including me) should really stop programming in RPG of any flavor. But we probably won’t.”

“IBM should really provide a seamless, push-button migration from 5250 green screen technology to web browser based clients. But they probably won’t. Lastly, there will be an IBM marketing campaign based on Star Wars. Believe me, there will be!”

[Editor’s note: Sure, Patrick. “May the Force be with you!”]