The Enduring Power of IBM i
How the superior technology of IBM i and the passionate community surrounding it have supported and sustained the platform for the past 35 years
By Emma Pitzl
1988: The year CDs first outsold vinyl, floppy disks were commonplace and the Sega Genesis gaming console was all the rage. It was also the year that IBM introduced the AS/400, a new family of midrange computers designed for small and midsize businesses, and with it: the OS/400 OS. Thanks to its usability, affordability and exceptional computing power—and the 1,000 compatible software packages that were released simultaneously—the AS/400 quickly became one of the most widely used business computing systems. By 1997, IBM had shipped more than 400,000 AS/400s.
The next big milestone was in 2000, when IBM rebranded the AS/400 as the iSeries server, and again as Power Systems in 2008. The OS was renamed, as well, becoming IBM i.
June 21, 2023, marks another significant milestone: the 35th anniversary of the IBM i.
“IBM i retains the base architecture that provides so much value even today to our client base,” says Steve Will, IBM Distinguished Engineer and chief architect of IBM i. Will is always quick to point out that the OS is anything but old and irrelevant. From the beginning, IBM i was built with users in mind, giving them the ability to move forward without making drastic changes.
Today, the OS supports worldwide companies of various sizes, from enterprises to small and medium businesses. IBM i is and will continue to be a core platform thanks to the adaptability of the technology itself and the community around it.
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The System
The OS is the foundation for customers’ success, helping them respond to change with agility, modernize to keep up with the always-shifting IT landscape and generate business value.
Moving forward without disruption
The technology landscape—and with it, IBM i—has constantly evolved for the past 35 years. “I started on the platform in 1989,” says Jim Buck, CEO and cofounder of imPower Technologies. “The system’s ability to change with the times has helped thousands of companies be successful.”
When the AS/400 was introduced, most tech companies were only working with proprietary technology. The IBM midrange system was no different, but as time went on, the need to integrate with other systems grew. For example: The AS/400 had its own 520-byte storage device disks, but IBM later began using the same 512-byte sector storage used by the rest of the industry while retaining the single-level store architecture.
The system continued to evolve, using software that was written in languages not defined by IBM, and later incorporating open-source technology. Through all of those changes, however, the compiled code that was written at the very beginning continued to run and does so today.
Will explains, “The evolution has protected customers’ investments while also incorporating standard and off-the-shelf I/O and open-source software that allowed us to compete and excel with other servers as they evolved.
Modernizing alongside new technologies
In recent years, IBM i has evolved to embrace new technologies as they emerge, like artificial intelligence (AI), cloud and analytics, helping businesses get more value from their data. And today, data is at the core of everything.
Will notes, “We continue to invest in whatever today’s version of analytics is—getting more from your data than simply doing the transactions … being able to incorporate and integrate into IBM i’s Db2; all that forward-thinking data processing will make it unnecessary for people to have their data anywhere else.” He adds that IBM i is a core platform because “it contains your data and runs your business processes against that data efficiently, reliability and securely.”
In addition to powerful data and analytics capabilities, more and more users are running part of their workloads on the cloud, changing the way IBM i is consumed and managed. Thanks to the prevalence of ISVs and IBM partners supporting IBM i, clients are accustomed to their systems being managed by others. As cloud grows, clients are now asking whether the way they’re managing their system makes the most sense for their business.
“The other thing is that the technology associated with implementing clouds has actually permeated the whole ecosystem,” says Will.
Recognizing that clients would desire to manage IBM i in a cloud-like environment, the IBM team added features like live partition mobility and virtual media instead of physical media—two very cloud-like things. “We had to invent the Technology Refresh mechanism so that we could implement those things. So in a very real way, Technology Refreshes are a cloud technology,” says Will. Regularly offering Technology Refreshes enables IBM to service clients in cloud environments more effectively.
Will adds, “Whether you use IBM i in a cloud or not, we are under the covers using cloud technology to deliver it.”
An adaptive customer base
IBM i’s ability to integrate with modern technologies is a testament to the fact that “legacy” doesn’t equate to “irrelevant.” Marina Schwenk, senior programmer/analyst at Everbrite, LLC, notes, “The availability of open source, Git, unit testing, and now AI on this platform … there really is nothing you can’t do with IBM i. You just need to know how.”
While many users are accustomed to legacy technologies like green screens and RPG, newcomers on the platform are bringing in a wealth of knowledge and methodologies.
Jon Paris, co-owner of Partner400—an IBM i education, consulting and mentoring service—says new technologies have been one of the biggest changes in his decades-long career as an IBM i educator. “When we first started [teaching], we were teaching RPGers to be better at RPG, and then we moved more and more into, ‘What's RPG?’ and teaching it to people who thought it meant ‘role playing games,’” says Paris. Over the years, he’s added SQL, PHP, Python, JavaScript and HTML to his arsenal. “It’s not enough to know RPG anymore,” he adds.
Whether you use them or not, Will says keeping up with the latest technologies—for example, open-source software—is important for two reasons: It makes individuals more valuable employees, but it also helps them work more efficiently. Will explains, “Some of the new technologies that are out there can do things in a very small amount of work that would've taken a lot of work to do with older technology … make sure you're aware of what those latest technologies are and what they can do so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel all the time.”
“There really is nothing you can’t do with IBM i. You just need to know how.”
—Marina Schwenk
LISTEN: Steve Will on the repeatable value of IBM i solutions—and the importance of maintaining them
It’s also important for companies to recognize that IBM i solutions are not just expenses; rather, they are assets that can generate more business value. That’s a key part of the power of IBM i. “I want customers to realize that the assets they have can be enhanced. … They don’t have to throw them away and start again,” says Will. “You’ve got plenty of value there already. Realize that and realize it’ll cost you something, but that expense is an asset. It’s not merely just something you have to do.”
The Community
Another key element in the success of IBM i? The contributions of its users. Will notes that the IBM i community is not only passionate about the platform, but also willing to support the IBM team and give constructive feedback. “This community absolutely wants to interact with those of us who are actually developing it in a way that will help us see what we can do better and then move forward,” he says.
IBM i users and partners see and truly appreciate the value that the OS has brought to their careers and businesses. “We appreciate everything that IBM's done over the last 35 years, and we hope that it continues for another 35 years—that we can come back here and have this conversation again to see where we're at 35 years from now. ... We love the platform. It's provided a very good life for us,” mentions Michael Ash, president of TL Ashford, an IBM i software vendor.
The community also adds value to the platform by continually pursuing and investing in education and training opportunities, adapting as the platform adapts. User groups, in particular, are a vital resource for IBM i education, as well as networking and advocacy. Manzoor Siddiqui, executive director of COMMON, the largest IBM i user group in the world, says, “User groups have contributed to the growth of IBM i over the past 35 years, and we anticipate that this will continue for the foreseeable future. As long as there is an IBM i community, user groups will be central to that community.
“Our success only happens because there are solutions on our platform that help people run business, and there are business partners who help those clients move forward and take advantage of it. Period.”
—Steve Will
“We can’t even imagine how new technologies are going to influence and affect people’s lives in the future, but IBM i will be there.”
—Steve Will
The Future of IBM i
The importance of investing in IBM i education will only continue to grow, as one of the most pertinent topics in the community today is the skills gap. Some users have been on the platform for its entire 35-year existence, building up decades of valuable knowledge and experience—naturally, the time is coming for many experts to retire and for a new generation to come in.
Of course, new users come to the platform with a different set of skills than the more experienced people, as business and technology are constantly changing. Will says it’s important to be open to teaching the basics, and to be open to embracing the skills and perspectives that new people bring in.
Sometimes, part of the battle of training new users is simply teaching them what kind of capabilities they have with IBM i in the first place. For Partner400’s Paris and co-owner Susan Gantner, teaching Java programmers to use free-form RPG was a vivid example. After a week of class, none of the students in one of their cohorts had completed their homework. According to Gantner, they say the reason was that “we’d written a bit of Java code on IBM i—because, why not, you can do that. But after the first week of class, we realized it would’ve been way easier and better for the application to do this in RPG. So we rewrote some of the Java apps that we had already written in RPG.” Gantner laughs, “They became fans.”
While technical know-how is imperative, working on IBM i is about more than knowing the technology. Looking forward, employers need to remember the value of new perspectives, perhaps from those who don’t come from a technology background. “We’ve got to look at this as an opportunity to bring fresh ideas in without putting requirements on [newcomers] to know things that were maybe valuable 25 years ago, but are just a piece of what they’re going to need to know for their careers,” says Will.
Business acumen—having an understanding of the client base and the product set of the company—is another critical factor when it comes to succeeding in an IBM i career. Buck emphasizes the importance of business intelligence in his program. When new developers come in, he says, “Give them to me, I’ll teach them the IBM stuff. … You’ve got to concentrate on teaching them your business.”
Enabling experienced developers to pass on their business knowledge is perhaps just as important as passing on their technical knowledge. The business world 10-20 years from now will certainly be different from today; technology will change but the need to carry out business operations will not.
How will technology change? No one can be sure, but Schwenk predicts, “I see AI taking off, the platform continuing to modernize and move away from older practices like green screen menus, programming RPG II and RPG III and the adoption of open source to really take off,” she says. “Before we know it, developers around the world will use this platform in new, cool ways that we don’t know about yet.”
“We can’t even imagine how new technologies are going to influence and affect people’s lives in the future,” Will concludes. “But IBM i will be there.”