Always nice to know the boys in blue are not soundly asleep. No doubt they'll come up with some really good stuff again, both on db2 and rpg, they always do. Unfortunatelly I never notice any new Power customers, rather customers migrating to wintel or other non-IBM stuff. Surely a number of old customers will not be able to migrate their investment and will be very happy with the new stuff indeed but it does not seem to be an expanding market.

While I am trying to start a new product line in this market space, I do see that former IBM Execs really screwed up this market by over pricing (and hence over charging) for IBM i platforms and software.

Mostly what it did was get people to move off the platform and cost those who stayed more money than ever. While it may have helped their bonus or career promotions at that time, it basically stunted growth for IBM i.

I recently purchased a Power7+ system and find it very powerful. A Power8 and eventually Power8+ system would be "crazy fast" and I'd love to have one. But like digital Cameras, there's always one more improvement coming "next time". So you have to decide if you want to live for today or waste your life waiting for a better tomorrow. I prefer to live better today rather than suffer now with the promise (hope?) for something better tomorrow. If you do that, you never really get a good quality of life.

Programmers do not control the purse strings and therefore have less input into major purchases that we may like to believe. At the end of the day, if the company can't afford or simply will not spend the money on new Power8 hardware because IBM i increases the cost too much, then we all suffer living with old stuff.   It would be great if it were a 1965 Corvette but its not. Unlike some over priced automobiles, over priced computers are not only not collectable, they hinder your ability to improve your company's infrastructure tomorrow--if you paid $1,000,000 for a system today, you're going to want it to last 5 to 10 years, at least. But in the 4 to 6 years range, that hardware is going to seem like an old steam engine. And when resellers offer you $50k for a $1million item after only 5 years, you realize that buying a new camera is actually a better value than an new Power8 running IBM i.

IBM really only has two issues wtih the IBM i platform (okay, 3 if you include the absolutely stupid name)

1. It is far too high a price for what you get.
2. It lacks a native GUI that is a show-stopper for 99% of all new customers 

But IBM can continue to tout how great the name choice was in an effort convince existing customer that IBM was right in changing the name. The sad truth today, only about 5 people care about the name of the product, everybody else wants it to be "faster, cheaper, better".

funny, they gave an example of a company in the UK that has installed 7,000 boxes and have another 3,000 different customers accessing an ibm i via the cloud (i.e. the internet). And They picked up those 3,000 in less than 2 years.

I know from reading the forum all you hear about his folks who are getting rid of their "as/400's" and going wintel as one person said. Well I went into this with that mindset, until I heard Steve talk and there is growth there. No doubt I too wish the software was a bit cheaper, etc.

But in some instances I have to blame the IT staff/manager that is sitting with V5R1 or something like that, who has not done anything but their green screen apps. They aren't doing php on the box, they aren't doing web services, they haven't did anything to modernize, they haven't hoarded management for new boxes, etc. I mean had they had pc servers in that time, they would have been changed a few times and the cost of ownership with the endless new operating systems, etc. would have been high. So some of the "obsolete" idea of the ibm i has to do with the staff, not with ibm.

I mean how many are doing apps for mobile devices to their ibmi?  And with the new RCAC (row column access control) where you can lock out various rows or columns via a user, well that fits right in. I mean there are 15,000 new apps being written every day, and so yes security is an issue but the ibm i is a bit more secure than others. We have an intregrated db on the machine, no one else does.

And the new power 8's to change the subject have a 40gb ethernet adapter that he said will push and pull 40gb each, so 80gb of throughput. That is fast.