Where is Bob Cancilla?

Michael Morisy — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:10:51 +0000

When former IBM alum and noted iSeries critic Bob Cancilla disappeared from the Internet, it caused quite the stir on the Midrange.com mailing list: His Twitter account, @i_nsider disappeared (cache), as did his blog, I-nsider. Commenters speculated that Bob would be back, and they were right: Cancilla addressed the mailing list himself the next morning:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Bob Cancilla
Date: Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 9:45 AM
Subject: Re: Bob Cancilla’s blog taken down?
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion

I’m back.

I have two blogs that I shall keep up dated. They are:

Cancilla on i — http://cancillaoni.blogspot.com/
Modern Computer Systems – http://computersystemstoday.blogspot.com/

Modern Computer Systems will discuss my ideas for the future of corporate systems. It is business systems architecture centric discussion that is none technical at least from a technology standpoint. I spent the bulk of my career designing and building 3 what today might be called ERP systems for 3 insurance companies and an Insurance software house before taking a detour into IBM with the misguided thought that I might make a difference in what they were doing. I was wrong.

And yes, I did part company with Oxford. We are good friends but are looking at different goals and directions. I am now totally independent and am not selling anyone’s software.

Cancilla on i will have posts on my take on the iSeries and its unfortunate state of affairs.

The article I posted on Cancilla on i is similar to the one I had on the i-nsider but is different.

Please note my business today is pure consulting not constrained by any products. My goal is to provide the best path for my clients that I believe to be correct. Some of you may disagree with my opinions on the future of iSeries. I caution you to look very carefully at what is going on within IBM along with the goals and objectives of the IBM’rs who tell you that the future of IBM i is rosy. I will not quote numbers as that would be totally inappropriate, but be assured that the numbers seem to be rapidly decreasing.

Some of you quoted some major companies that are using iSeries. Many of those are leaving the platform under mandate from their corporate IT organizations. Again I will not name names as I got that information while at IBM so that would be inappropriate, but some of the largest and best known iSeries shops are leaving the platform.

So Bob Cancilla is definitely back (he even has a new Twitter account, @RCancilla) and definitely still dour on the prospects of a rosy future for the iSeries.

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Where is Bob Cancilla?