Europe, Japan, and the U.S. agree to collect 1,000 IBM i customer stories by next year.
The first worldwide meeting of leaders of the iManifest Alliance took place last Tuesday at the COMMON conference in Orlando, Florida, and concluded with a commitment to develop and publicize 1,000 customer stories of successful implementations of solutions on IBM i.
The three principals—Jeff Olen, head of iManifest U.S.; Ray Titcombe, head of iManifest Europe, Middle East, and Asia; and S. Kakizawa, leader of iManifest Japan—met inside the Orlando Hilton, the official COMMON conference hotel, and discussed ways to expand the group's membership and promote the IBM i operating system, tools, and solutions. Also participating in the meeting were COMMON Board President Wayne Madden and Ralph Gervasi, COMMON's executive director. The iManifest and COMMON leaders brainstormed ways the two groups could work together in the future to the benefit of both organizations.
The iManifest Japan group got the ball rolling last year by promoting the IBM i platform through running a full-page ad in one of Japan's largest business newspapers with a circulation of three million readers. The ad, which cost $100,000, attested to the stability and security of the platform. The publication generated much positive reaction among Japan's business leaders, according to Kakizawa, who spoke with MC Press Online following the meeting.
"The customer always comes first," said Kakizawa. He said that IBM's apparent reduction in promotion and marketing for the IBM i operating system specifically is making business people in Japan somewhat nervous. The old adage that if you're not moving forward then you must be falling behind seems to be the assumption among some of the country's business leaders. Many of Japan's largest companies are running IBM i, and there is much at stake should IBM pull back too far from the i market, favoring Linux—or more aptly, AIX—instead of IBM i. IBM continues to deny that it has any such plans and attests to the large investment it made recently in upgrades to RPG and the operating system released last month as IBM i 7.1 as examples of its long-term commitment to the platform. The company acknowledges, however, that growth of IBM i is largely flat in North America, a mature market, and that new customers are coming forward today most frequently in the Far East, where low total cost of ownership and other benefits of the platform are highly prized. Company leaders also point out that choice of operating system is largely solution-driven and customers generally will commit to whatever operating system supports the solutions they wish to run.
Kakizawa doesn't fault IBM for the flat growth in IBM i licenses. He states that the operating system and the hardware on which it runs have been very good to software and solution vendors as well as to businesses. "Now it's a time to give back," says Kakizawa.
Olen says that the iManifest Alliance has set a deadline of March 31, 2011, to reach its goal of collecting 1,000 customer stories from throughout the world. The stories will be kept in a shared database for use by all three iManifest organizations and their members. Japan already has about 100 IBM i customer-success stories. The groups will share the success stories but will continue to keep their finances and other operations separate for the time being, Olen said. So far, IBM has not expressed any reaction to the iManfest group one way or another but reportedly is linking to iManifest Japan's customer stories on the Web.
There are about 10 iManifest members so far in North America, reports Olen, and about 70 in Japan, says Kakizawa. Olen says he expects the number of iManifest members to grow and reports that the group will encourage their member organizations to poll their respective clients to gauge interest in joining and determine what iManifest could give them back in return for their support.
Olen said the meeting with COMMON's leaders was encouraging, and the idea of having an iManifest conference in advance of the next annual COMMON conference was discussed and will be explored.
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