COMMON Europe notes ensuring complete high availability and keeping staff skills current rank second and third.
COMMON Europe (CE) conducted its sixth annual Top Concerns Survey last May and June with global multilingual participation. It obtained 524 participations from Europe, Americas, Africa, Australasia, consisting of customers, IBM BPs/ISVs and IBM. The Top Concerns Survey enables COMMON Europe to understand global i community priorities to influence IBM and its Business Partners as well as to share them amongst worldwide Power i users.
This 2011 survey showed that "satisfy internal customers" is for the third year in a row top priority for survey participants, the worldwide users of IBM i on Power Systems, System i, or the AS/400. “Ensure complete high availability" rose from last year’s fifth to the second place in 2011 and "keep the skills current for the existing staff” had almost the same score. They are followed by “receive consistent high quality vendor support” and “modernize applications.”
“Aggressive marketing of IBM i by IBM" came in at sixth position although the whole i community cites it as a real concern. Cloud computing is still in its nascent stage for the i community as "software licensing or hardware investments as a service" were voted last two in a list of 15.
|
Budgets (Total responses 524) |
Increased |
Stable |
Decreased |
Do not know |
No Info. |
|
OpEx (IT running budgets) |
16% |
46% |
18% |
17% |
3% |
|
CapEx (Capital expenditures) |
24% |
41% |
17% |
15% |
3% |
|
Migrations (Customer responses 343) |
Already done |
Yes/Planned |
May be |
No/Not yet |
No info. |
|
Migration to i7.1 from V5R4 |
- |
2% |
- |
48% |
50% |
|
Migration to IBM i6.1 |
39% |
15% |
- |
34% |
12% |
|
Migration to IBM i7.1 |
8% |
25% |
6% |
48% |
14% |
|
Migration to POWER7 systems |
16% |
15% |
32% |
29% |
8% |
|
Migration to Blade with IBM i |
6% |
- |
- |
11% |
83% |
We should be cautious in interpreting these numbers as web voters or CEC participants are often active users and early adopters of technology. However, we see a general trend of budget improvement compared to 2010. The migration numbers are also impressive as more than half are already on IBM i6.1 and almost one third are on IBM i7.1 and POWER7 processors.
Although "Aggressive marketing for the IBM I" was in the list of "concerns" and was voted 6th, it was still the most cited golden concern. Next in line golden or unlisted concerns relate to "Continuity of i", "Pricing", "Application modernization" and "Skills".
Ian Jarman, Manager of IBM Power systems software, the opening keynote speaker, drew random names of participants for three iPods for the COMMON Europe Congress opening session participants. The four other iPods for web voters, one each for Africa, The Americas, Australasia and Europe are also drawn by an innocent hand and will be shipped soon. Congratulations to the winners Danie Coetzee from Africa, Todd Nashville from The Americas, Srinivas Sanaka from Australasia and Herbert Czerwonka from Europe.
The full Top Concerns 2011 preliminary results are below. They are also available on COMMON Europe web site www.comeur.org. These surveys are global and multilingual in order to reach IBM i on Power Systems, System i and AS/400 community worldwide. Participants rated 15 Top Concerns on a scale of 1 to 10, added their own Golden Concern(s) and replied to current budget and migrations issues.
COMMON Europe Congress 2012
COMMON Europe will celebrate its 50th year in 2012 with a Golden Jubilee congress from 9 to 12 June 2012 in the beautiful Waltz capital of the world, Vienna, Austria. Please already save the date of this promising once in 50 years event for rich education from world renowned IBM and industry experts and great networking opportunities.
About Top Concerns Survey
The Top Concerns Survey is a strategic feature of COMMON Europe. For previous results, please visit www.comeur.org or contact Ranga Deshpande, Project Leader, at
Business users want new applications now. Market and regulatory pressures require faster application updates and delivery into production. Your IBM i developers may be approaching retirement, and you see no sure way to fill their positions with experienced developers. In addition, you may be caught between maintaining your existing applications and the uncertainty of moving to something new.
IT managers hoping to find new IBM i talent are discovering that the pool of experienced RPG programmers and operators or administrators with intimate knowledge of the operating system and the applications that run on it is small. This begs the question: How will you manage the platform that supports such a big part of your business? This guide offers strategies and software suggestions to help you plan IT staffing and resources and smooth the transition after your AS/400 talent retires. Read on to learn:
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