COMMON Europe's annual "Top Concerns" survey has produced results that, for the first time, include responses from across the globe. The 2008 survey included 370 respondents from COMMON Europe, COMMON North America, and Interaction Australasia, including customers, IBM Business Partners, and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). The Top Concerns survey, originated by COMMON North America in the early 1990's, now enables the COMMON global community to better understand member priorities and to find solutions to technology concerns.
Survey respondents reported that "improving IT security and continuity," and "satisfying internal customers" are the most important concerns to worldwide System i users. Other concerns listed as highly important included doing fast application development to fulfill business needs, keeping skills current for the existing staff, and treating data security and confidentiality as business risks. Respondents had the opportunity to express concerns not listed as options available in the survey. The concerns most frequently cited were "Make the management understand the value of System i" and "Native graphical user interface (or modernize application)."
The survey included reactions to the recent IBM Power Systems announcements. Forty-three percent of customers said they plan to upgrade to IBM i 6.1 in 2008, with 23 percent of respondents planning to upgrade to new POWER6 processor-based systems and 6 percent planning to implement with IBM BladeCenter.
"IBM looks forward to the feedback from the i community through the survey and especially the requirements from the COMMON Europe and Americas customer councils that help shape our future products," said Mark Shearer, vice president of Marketing, IBM Business Systems.
"COMMON North America believes that the Top Concerns survey is an invaluable tool in gauging the issues and concerns that users are currently facing and presenting them, now as a unified global voice, to IBM," said Randy Dufault, president of COMMON North America.
About COMMON North America
COMMON is the world's largest users group of midrange IBM and IBM-compatible technology. The organization comprises more than 4,000 individual and corporate members. They represent more than 22,000 IT professionals involved with the IBM i5/OS, OS/400 and related solutions. For more information about COMMON, visit http://www.common.org/.
About Top Concerns Survey
Top Concerns is a strategic feature of COMMON Europe. Complete results of the 2008 survey and previous surveys are available at the COMMON Europe Web site http://www.comeur.org/.
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