The new year is upon us, and the engines of industry are warming up after a brief holiday respite. Like most IT analysts, I find myself fielding questions about what the next 12 months will bring to those of us who live and breathe technology. Instead of spouting some generalizations about how IT will evolve, I'm going to offer you three predictions that you can use to chart your course through the year as an iSeries professional. Without further ado, here they are:
Prediction #1: The iSeries will gain widespread recognition as a consolidation platform. When we all look back on 2004, we will say that this was the year when the world finally came to see the iSeries as a server for consolidating multiple operating environments. While the iSeries has been a consolidation platform for a long time, the IT community still thinks of it as the server that runs OS/400 green-screen applications. This year, that perception will shift for the following reasons.
- The maturation of the iSeries Linux environment. During 2003, IBM and its Business Partners made extraordinary efforts to create a Linux platform for the iSeries. At the beginning of the year, IBM had almost none of its software running on iSeries Linux. Today, around 30 IBM products are certified for this environment. In addition, more than 100 third-party products are now available. With Linux interest growing on a daily basis, it is likely that an even greater number of Linux solutions will become available for the iSeries during 2004. This should convince many organizations to consider the iSeries as a platform for consolidating the Linux applications they have deployed over the last several years.
- The addition of AIX support. During the second half of this year, IBM will ship a new release of OS/400 that includes support at the microcode level for running AIX within iSeries logical partitions (LPARs). This feature will not convince large AIX shops to ditch their pSeries servers for the iSeries. However, it could lead iSeries shops that run a few AIX workloads to consolidate them to their primary servers.
- Greater scalability and LPAR support. During the first half of this year, IBM will announce iSeries models that offer much greater CPU performance and I/O bandwidth as well as expanded LPAR capabilities. At the high end, the iSeries will feature up to 64 POWER5 processors, performance levels of around 150,000 CPW, and support for up to 256 LPARs. These announcements will make the iSeries far more attractive as a consolidation platform. However, don't expect IBM to ship a completely new line of servers during the first half. It is more likely that the IT vendor will deliver new entry-level and midrange models around the middle of this year and high-end models during the second half.
By the way, the next iSeries product family will probably come with other features that further enhance their consolidation capabilities. These include rack-mounted models, reliability and serviceability enhancements, and new tools for managing LPARs and multiple operating environments.
Prediction #2: Software vendors will increasingly target medium-sized companies with enterprise applications that run on Java and .NET middleware platforms. Last year, a growing list of independent software vendors (ISVs) committed themselves to creating products for medium-sized companies. Those commitments were fueled by predictions that over the next two to three years, mid-market software spending will grow at rates that are several points higher than rates for enterprises. As these vendors enter the market, they will increasingly deliver solutions on middleware platforms in order to integrate their applications with each other and with those of other ISVs. This will make 2004 a year in which many ISVs and mid-market customers choose whether to build their solutions on a Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) middleware stack or on Microsoft's .NET platform.
Prediction #3: The iSeries community will face the greatest shift in skills requirements of the last 15 years. As a result of these trends, many iSeries professionals will find themselves deploying more enterprise applications and middleware products during 2004 than in previous years. Moreover, they will deploy a growing number of these solutions on operating systems other than OS/400 and use object-oriented languages to work with them. They will also find themselves working with middleware environments that are assuming increasingly prominent roles within their IT infrastructures.
These trends will present many of you with some of the biggest challenges of your IT careers. Will you acquire the skills that you need to support new applications and assume new responsibilities within your organization? Or will you try to maintain the status quo and take the risk of letting other IT professionals seize the opportunities? Since you read MC Mag Online, I fully assume that you're answering "yes" to the first question and "no" to the second question. I commend you for your decision and wish you the best of luck in your endeavors this year. I also look forward to bringing you the news and analyses that you need to make those endeavors successful.
Lee Kroon is a Senior Industry Analyst for Andrews Consulting Group, a firm that helps mid-sized companies manage business transformation through technology. You can reach him at
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