Planet i

Is it time to put your old trusted IBM i based war horse out to pasture and move to the cloud?  Most of the major traditional IBM i or OS/400 based software vendors have versions of their software that run on modern Linux or Windows platforms.  There are now vendors such as Logica in the UK who offer secure reliable cloud based platforms to host these applications and more importantly guide you through the migration from your IBM i based version of software that is probably a few releases back from the vendor's current software running on modern systems.

Are you running WebSphere applications?  Should you be?  Proprietary (and expensive) application servers like WebSphere have given way to Apache Tomcat.  You should be able to run your Java based apps on Tomcat with an improvement in productivity and a major reduction in cost.

I personally recommend moving your applications to a cloud based hosting company, engage professionals to help manage migration to your existing vendor or a new vendor's software.

It is sort of ironic that today many IBM i based companies who originally selected the AS/400 as a turnkey machine, complete with hardware and software to run their business now have a highly customized and extended set of applications that has grown their IT staff from zero to many.

What are you IT folks telling you?  That RPG will be here forever that IBM will keep the IBM i OS forever?  Are they telling you that you are sitting on a powder keg that can explode at anytime WHEN not IF IBM withdraws support for IBM i and the RPG programming language? 

I've been working with European companies who put the best interests of their companies first over their own careers.  They are with very few exceptions working to modernize and move to Linux or Windows based system and many are doing so in a combination of public and private clouds.

Clouds are pretty amazing.  You can buy additional capacity when you need it to handle peak period demand on your systems.  All reputable cloud vendors have automatic load balancing and replication to multiple physical data centers so that if there is a local outage your systems automatically switch to the remote site.  In fact if you are a geographically distributed organization you will most likely have applications running on systems in many locations.

There is no system maintenance!  It is the responsibility of the cloud vendor to keep both their hardware and software current with the latest vendor fixes and insure that they have stable reliable operating environment.  Translate that to read you do not need system support people.

The total cost of cloud based operations is a fraction of what you will pay in terms of hardware, software, and people to maintain and support your own Power Systems IBM i based environment.

There was a linkedin topic that reports that going rate for an IBM i system administrator is $90k per year plus in most parts of the United States.  So figure about $120k total cost.  That is a lot of money for any company, but especially smaller companies with small IBM i based machines!  This is a totally unnecessary expense in a cloud based environment.

Some cloud vendors can offer IBM i based systems so that you can move your systems to the cloud immediately and eliminate the costs associated with owning your own systems.  You can then work with the vendor or other vendor to begin migrating to a Linux or Windows based solution for long term strategic systems.

There is absolutely no reason to own your own hardware or operate your own data centers and infrastructure today!  You can save thousands to millions of dollars running your systems in a cloud.

Call or email me (see:  http://www.rjcancilla.com/ContactUs.html).

Read the original at Bob Cancilla on IBM i.

The following blog entry was written by Larry Nies, president of NSC, Inc. He has been working with PHP on the IBM i since 2005,...

Read the original at PowerUp.

This post is written by guest blogger Michelle August The CAAC (COMMON Americas Advisory Council) called snowy, icy Rochester home for three days in early December. They started off the meeting with a warm welcome from Dave Nelson and a Power Systems Update from Ian Jarman. This great start to the meeting set the tone [...]

Read the original at midrange.com - In My Humble Opinion.

Want a new, simpler way to access IBM i artifacts like HLL Programs and Spooled files? The new open Source toolkit is just for you!

Zend Server for IBM i 5.6 no longer ships with the old i5 toolkit. That much is true. And there has been some press about the expiration of the relationship with Aura, the authors of the toolkit we have used for the last few years. Zend’s official position can be found here. So with change comes the good, the bad and the downright awesome! What we are witnessing here is not just a new toolkit, but the dawning of a new era in software development.

IBM has been a primary engineer of the new toolkit as they have built XMLSERVICE. XMLSERVICE is IBM's first (as far as I know) official entry in the open source arena regarding IBM i. Sure IBM has contributed projects like Eclipse and contributed to projects like Apache and others. But XMLSERVICE represents IBM Rochester’s biggest investment in opening a new technology to the community that will drive IBM i workload for PHP and other open source languages to come. Yes, I said it, when the right group comes around to support Python or Ruby, IBM will be ready and waiting with XMLSERVICE to take care of their system integration needs! Special shout out to the YoungiProfessionals website for hosting the project up to now. the new home is a closely guarded secret, but will be made available very soon. And a GREAT BIG community shout out to Tony Cairns for the development work on XMLSERVICE, Sam Pinkhasov on the Toolkit API and Alan Seiden for the CW!

Zend is the first official consumer of XMLSERVICE by introducing the new Toolkit API classes into Zend Server. These classes represent the plumbing necessary to communicate with XMLSERVICE and return values important to the IBM i developer whether they be parameters from HLL programs or values from data areas. Oh, and we fixed a few things along the way. If you ever tried calling a sub-procedure from PHP you might have gotten frustrated with the fact that all you could get back was an INT. Well, not any more! The new toolkit can process goo-gobs of stuff and pass all kinds of data around the house.

But I have all those i5 function calls out there, what do I do? Well, as the FAQ indicates, we are also introducing the new Compatibility Wrapper classes in the new toolkit. These classes will deliver the ability to code i5 function calls using the procedural model and have the work completed by the new toolkit. This fills the last gap in the migration of the new toolkit. Customers who upgrade from previous versions of Zend Server for IBM i to Zend Server for IBM i 5.6 will still be able to use the old toolkit, if they so choose. But they also have the option to explore the new Open Source toolkit, as well. Kind of like having you cake and eating it too!

I just got back from Toronto where I introduced the new toolkit to TUG and it seems the enjoyed the presentation. I’ll be doing that at Omni in Chicago tomorrow and maybe at a local user group near you, soon! Drop me a line and let’s talk!

Read the original at Mike's IBM i PHP blog and more....

No doubt the IBM i is as relevant as ever. Why am "i" so confident? Consider the following reasons: 1. Security on the IBM i is as strong as ever. 2. The IBM i communications and connectivity...

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Read the original at ile rpg programming: tips and techniques.

Update 16-Jan-2012: Looks like the SOPA bill has been killed in the house, although the senate version is still alive.  We will still be observing the blackout on the 18th. Just a word of warning … on January 18th, between the hours of 8am and 8pm, the midrange.com mailing list archives will be observing a [...]

Read the original at midrange.com - In My Humble Opinion.

My wife was shopping in a major well known jewelry store this past week.  The employees apologized profusely for the difficulties in looking up her account and resolving an issue.  The system was an old AS/400 (IBM i on Power) based system running.  It was using a 5250 based user interface and the employee and her manager were totally frustrated in the difficulties of performing what should have been a simple task of looking up a customer and reviewing recent sales to the customer!

I checked into a hotel that was using an IBM i based system.  We had a price quote that was not matching the information that the desk clerk had in his 5250 based system.  He asked his manager to help and they still couldn't find the information we had.  Since we had a printed confirmation they honored the rates that had been quoted, but they had to call corporate to get help entering the overrides into the system.

I began moving the company I was working at the time to the web via Java and WebSphere and subsequently WebSphere portal back in 1995 and implemented our first web based applications in January of 1996 when the web was opened for commercial use.  Many AS/400 customers have yet to move to the web.  They are still using green screen 5250 terminal based applications written in RPG.

I call these companies AS/400 companies and it really doesn't matter that they may be running the latest version of IBM i on IBM Power system computers.  The reality is they are stuck in 1987 or prior.

The real issue is customer and employee frustration or satisfaction.  In today's world of instant messaging, video conversations, movies about everything, and the ability for computers to connect to each other around the globe, to be stuck with a green screen menu based system with all of its training requirements and complexity is nuts.

Where is the benefit?  What is the cost of supporting these old systems?  What are you paying the RPG programmers that maintain these systems? 

Isn't it time to move into the 21st century?  Isn't it time for systems that work for you instead of holding you back? 

Visit us at www.rjcancilla.com and see how we can help.

Read the original at Bob Cancilla on IBM i.

At work I’ve been splitting my time between two projects … one project is IBM i based using RPG … the other is Windows/*nix based using Java. One of my gripes about the other project is that that some of the error messages we get are difficult to figure out because we don’t get enough [...]

Read the original at midrange.com - In My Humble Opinion.

Read the original at Young i Perspectives.

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Read the original at IBM i for everyone!.