modernization

System i decline, modernization, and the next 5 years

Bob Cancilla, a former executive in the Rational division of IBM, has started a new blog up in representation of his new company, Reno-based application modernization provider Oxford International. Cancilla opened up his blog with a bang, saying that the IBM i operating system and the RPG programming language are in a state of deep decline with not a lot of support within the IBM organization.

But in addition to decrying the state of the platform, Cancilla offers up possibilities for keeping it alive. You’ll never guess what he suggests. Or maybe you will. That’s right, application modernization! The exact line of business that his new company is in.

Nevertheless, Cancilla has some interesting points about the IBM i platform along with some valuable insights having been there for four years. Here are a few of his suggestions:

Before joining IBM I was CTO for a major insurance company where I ran a development organization that did major in-house development. Our project funding was totally tied to current business objectives and funded by various departments or in certain cases approved by the steering committee by special corporate funding for projects that crossed organizational lines.

What I did not have was money to fund an IT technology project. Even our Y2K work had to be tied into business objectives.

I think that many of your are like I was and have to integrate your modernization initiatives into currently funded projects. I can tell you that my management would never have funded a major conversion initiative as a standalone project. The only way to fund modernization was to show a business need or financial benefit.

Legacy AS/400 meets the future of IBM i at COMMON 2009

While at COMMON, the push-pull of new versus old technologies for the IBM i (AS/400, iSeries, System i) has been an underlying theme. Trevor Perry’s recent assertion that IBM’s marketing of the i could kill the system sets the stage for the discussion. His experience has been shared at the conference and has been debated. On Tuesday I had a couple of great conversations and learned more about a couple of new products that are looking to the future.

The first is Zend PHP Server, which takes DB2 400 to the Web. Mike Pavlak demonstrates Zend PHP tools: Zend Core, Zend Studio for Eclipse, and Zend Platform.

Halcyon Software’s John Dominic, Channel Manager, shared the Systems Management Suite enterprise console interface and the message communicator product that allows two-way communication from a mobile device to the AS/400.

(When Halcyon wasn’t using their flat-screen to show how their products worked, they were challenging attendees to ski jumping on a Wii Fit that the winner got to take home).
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