Deep Thoughts with Richard Schoen

Well, I spent the past four days in Naples, FL talking with several iSeries professionals and learning about what they are doing in their shops. I was there to give a presentation on our RPG2SQL Integrator software, which is a middleware tool for talking to SQL Server and other ADO/ODBC databases from RPG. The biggest thing I learned while there is that almost every iSeries professional is working in an environment where the iSeries needs a lot of help to keep it in the thought process of the management team as a vital system that can play with other business systems. I keep talking to more and more people who are defecting or are implementing new software on other platforms such as Windows and Unix/Linux. One example of this would be the customer who is converting from JD Edwards World software which runs on green screen to the new OneWorld product which does not. They are replacing a single iSeries server with seven Windows servers to run the same application set. One of our other major customers has been told from their corporate headquarters that they are being assimilated into the corporate realm of running SAP and will be losing their iSeries running BPCS software in the next few months. While RJS is now developing for Windows and Unix/Linux, we still see the iSeries as our humble origins and would like to see the platform continue to thrive for years to come. Is there much that we can do to change the tide or is the iSeries destined to become just another plain vanilla server in the marketplace ?

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