IBM Reorganizes To Reflect Its New Business Machine

IBM Reorganizes To Reflect Its New Business Machine

Published: January 12, 2015

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Big Blue did a lot of changing last year, and CEO Ginni Rometty started off this year by making some organizational and personnel changes that reflect the new shape of its company and the opportunities that it sees ahead of it in the global economy that is also undergoing wrenching change. Information technology and the economy have been changing each other for so long that it is hard to say what is cause and what is effect, but what can be said is that IBM has spent more than 10 decades adapting to such changes.

In a memo to IBM employees that was sent out on January 5, Rometty explained the organizational changes as well as the rationale behind them.

"A year ago we laid out our strategy, and said that IBM's investments, acquisitions, divestitures--and our own practices as IBMers--would be reshaped by our strategic imperatives of data, cloud and engagement, underscored by security," Rometty wrote. "The past year has strongly validated our strategy, as clients embrace and invest in these new technologies. Our industry is rapidly re-ordering. And IBM has been moving aggressively--evident in a long list of 'signature moments' through 2014. They included the formation of IBM Watson; the global expansion of SoftLayer's cloud pods; the launch of Power8; the creation of our cloud platform-as-a-service, BlueMix; our $3 billion investment in next-generation semiconductor R&D; the acquisition of Cloudant; the launch of Watson Analytics; our divestitures of x86 servers and semiconductor manufacturing; our enterprise mobility alliance with Apple; our cloud partnerships with SAP and Tencent; and our Big Data partnership with Twitter."

While IBM mashed up Software Group, its very profitable software arm, with Systems and Technology Group, its sometimes profitable and sometimes money-losing hardware unit, back in July 2010 during a massive reorganization that set the stage for Rometty's rise to the top of Big Blue, the company did not organize itself into vertical stacks as it talked about its financials. Software Group and Systems and Technology Group remained distinct businesses, with their own segments and profit and loss statements. With the sale of the System x division to Lenovo Group, which closed in the United States in October and in Europe last week, IBM has seen fit to start talking about its systems business as a whole.

To that end, the new IBM Systems group will include Power Systems and System z mainframe servers, IBM's various tape, disk, and flash storage products as well as operating systems and middleware as a single unit. Tom Rosamilia, who was heading up Systems and Technology Group, will lead the IBM Systems group. The interesting bit to me is that IBM will finally show revenue for systems that actually reflects what it really does derive from its systems business--something it should have done a long time ago. IBM sells integrated stacks of servers, storage, and software to a very large portion of its customers, and if it wanted to show its strength in this regard, it should have perhaps changed the way it reported its revenues many years ago. It will be interesting to see how IBM accounts for the sale of middleware, database, and application software that is not tied to its own systems in some fashion.

As part of the reorganization, IBM is also appointing Steve Mills, the long-time leader of the Software Group and the executive chosen to run the combined software and systems units in recent years, as an executive vice president in charge of software and systems. The name change is significant in that Mills is the only executive vice president--all of the other top leaders are senior vice presidents. Even though software assets will be embedded in various IBM groups (including a new IBM Cloud group) and in vertical stacks that also have their own managers (such as the new IBM Healthcare group that was also created), Mills is being tapped to keep track of all of the software assets as a whole and keep everything humming. "We will also look to him to play a leadership role in our most significant technology partnerships and relationships involving clients, countries and our industry," Rometty said.

With Systems and Technology Group gone, IBM Research has to go somewhere, and it will be a free-standing unit led by Arvind Krishna, who is being elevated to senior vice president and director of the R&D arm of Big Blue. He succeeds John Kelly, who now has the position of senior vice president of solutions portfolio and research. Krishna was most recently general manager of development and manufacturing in the Systems and Technology Group, and he led the team that created the Power8 processor and who ran IBM's database business for many years as well as having key technical roles in Software Group and IBM Research.

In his new role spanning research and (I just hate this word) solutions, Kelly is manifesting something that has been happening with IBM for the past two decades, and that is the increasing connection between the research and development that IBM's scientists and researchers perform and a tie to solving specific business problems for customers. Indeed, Kelly is the bridge between IBM Research and three new cross-platform business units. They are: IBM Analytics, led by Bob Picciano; IBM Commerce, led by Deepak Advani; and IBM Security, led by Brendan Hannigan. All of these divisions, Rometty explained, will have an analytics component, will have software assets tied to them as well as professional services. Each unit, as Rometty put it, "will offer hybrid cloud delivery, and each unit will support open platforms and global ecosystems." I think that means the stacks IBM creates will be available on IBM's own systems as well as those of others and on its SoftLayer cloud and very likely other big clouds.

In some ways, these new stack groups resemble the IBM Watson group that was formed last year and that is being led by Mike Rhodin. IBM is also forming another industry-focused unit called IBM Healthcare, which Rhodin will create using the hardware, software, services, and research available across IBM.

All of the executives of these units as well as Krishna report to Kelly in the new organization chart. Picciano has been general manager of IBM's Lotus groupware business, overall software sales, and development and support for the DB2 database running on Linux, Windows, and Unix platforms, among other jobs. Deepak Advani was CEO at statistical analysis software maker SPSS before IBM acquired it and has most recently been in charge of management tools for systems and cloud. Hannigan was CEO of Q1 Labs, which IBM acquired in October 2011 and which is the basis of its former security division. Rhodin was also a general manager related to software before taking the IBM Watson role, and headed up IBM's Software Solutions Group, which peddled Smarter Commerce, Smarter Cities, business analytics, and social business stacks to customers. Before taking over various IBM system units over the past year, Rosamilia was in charge of IBM's very successful WebSphere middleware business.

The last big change that was announced for 2015 is the creation of the IBM Cloud group, which will be headed up by long-time IBM executive Robert LeBlanc. The SoftLayer cloud, the Cloud Managed Services (CMS) tools derived from SmartCloud and OpenStack, and the BlueMix commercialized version of the open source Cloud Foundry tool will be put into this new group. LeBlanc has been in charge of IBM's Tivoli systems management and WebSphere middleware lines in the past, among many other high-level jobs. It looks like Rosamilia and LeBlanc report directly to Rometty, but that is not clear from her message to employees.

If you are sensing a theme here, aside from change, it is that software has been the route to a senior position at IBM.

"As you can see, IBM software has become an essential element in every part of our company," Rometty said in her note to IBM employees. "Indeed, it is so because our software portfolio is the foundation of the world's core business systems and powers the expanding array of cloud-based solutions we are bringing to clients."

I can't wait to see the new financial presentation reflecting these new groups and units, which IBM will probably use when it reports its fourth quarter 2014 financial results, which should come out by the end of January if history is any guide.

TCO, TCA and Reliability – the 2014 ITG IBM i Studies

TCO, TCA and Reliability – the 2014 ITG IBM i Studies

November 11, 2014

Two years ago, I wrote a blog about two ITG studies that compared IBM i to our competition in the small and midsized business (SMB) market, and in the Enterprise market. Those studies have recently been refreshed, and I’ve been using charts and data from these new studies as I’ve been traveling talking about the value of IBM i on Power Systems. In today’s blog, I will point out the highlights and give you links so you can get the full studies.

 

The first 2014 study is the ITG study called “IBM i on Power Systems for Midsize Businesses.” The short URL for it ishttp://bit.ly/IBM_i_ITG2014SMB and it’s not much of a surprise that it shows, again, that the total cost of ownership for IBM i is significantly less than for the typical x86-based competition. Here’s a key chart:



As with the previous studies, the comparisons are made over a three-year period, where each set of bars represents the entire cost of running a business using only the platforms indicated. You can see businesses using IBM i and Power Systems costs 49% less than running that business on Microsoft Windows Server and x86, and 55% less than Oracle/Linux on x86. IBM i integration, ease of use and powerful DB2 contribute greatly to the value proposition the platform has had for years.

 

This 2014 study reconfirmed the competitive Total Cost of Acquisition (TCA) we now have with IBM i. While this still surprises many customers, it is valuable information to have when discussing IT investments.


 

Again, IBM i and Power Systems combine to beat the competition on average for acquisition costs; by 35% vs. Windows & x86 and by 46% vs. Oracle/Linux & x86. Powerful data to show your businesses how much IBM i and Power Systems help the bottom line, even when only looking at costs.

 

As in the previous round of studies, in 2014, ITG refreshed its study of the reliability of the platform. The new study is called “IBM i on Power Systems for Enterprise Businesses” because one of the most important aspects of a platform for large clients is “How much money will it cost me when it doesn’t work?” The short URL is http://bit.ly/IBM_i_ITG2014Ent.

 

For this study, ITG looked at large businesses in various industries that run on IBM i, and those in the same industry that run on competitive platforms. I’ve selected one chart that shows the huge difference platform choice makes.

 

Again the study looks at a three-year period, and again, IBM i + Power Systems is a winning combination. The length of the bar indicates how much money is being lost by the business when downtime occurs – and that can be actual revenue lost, or potential revenue that is not able to be gained because the application is unavailable. With the integrity and reliability of the system, and with the features we’ve added over time to allow more changes to be made in the environment without disruption, the cost of downtime is significantly lower on IBM i.

 

I’d encourage all of you to follow the links and enter the little bit of information our marketing people ask you to provide so that you can see the full reports. Then, the next time you encounter someone who wonders if trusting your business to IBM i and Power Systems is the right business decision, point them to the documents. The numbers in the study, plus your personal experiences with the stability and function of IBM i make a pretty powerful story.

Debunking the Myth that IBM i Costs More for Midsize Businesses: ITG Looks at the Numbers

Debunking the Myth that IBM i Costs More for Midsize Businesses: ITG Looks at the Numbers

Chris Maxcer cmaxcer wickedcoolwordsllc@gmail.com | 1 dec. 2014 | Tags:  linux tco x86 ibmi | 219 bezoeken

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The International Technology Group (ITG) has been taking a close look at total cost of ownership (TCO) data for years, often packaging up their findings in research reports that include a deep understanding of IBM i on Power Systems. This fall, ITG has released a pair of new reports that are, quite simply, must-reads for any IBM i-loving IT pro.

 

More importantly, the research compares the relative costs of competing systems against businesses of similar sizes and types -- manufacturing, distribution, and retail companies. In "IBM i on Power Systems for Midsized Businesses: Minimizing Costs and Risks for Cloud, Analytics and Mobile Environments," the report compares the IBM i operating system deployed on POWER8-based systems to two alternatives -- Microsoft Windows Server 2012 and SQL Server 2014, and x86 Linux servers with Oracle Database 12c.

 

Not only does IBM i on POWER8 crush the competition in TCO when calculated over three years, IBM i costs for hardware and software licensing fees are significantly lower than Windows and SQL server and lower than x86 Linux server with Oracle. The numbers are amazing, but I'm willing to bet that a good many IT pros believe IBM i is not only more expensive for midsize businesses . . . but that some IBM i-focused pros still believe that, too.

 

How Much Less Expensive Is IBM i on POWER8? 

 

In initial cost of acquisition, an IBM i installation averages 35% less than using Windows and SQL Server . . . and 46% less than using x86 Linux servers with Oracle. When extended out to three years, IBM i 7.2 on Power Systems average 45% less than for use of Microsoft Windows Server 2012 and SQL Server 2014, and 51% less than for x85 Linux servers with Oracle.

 

Wow.

 

You need to read this report and have it handy (download the .pdf) so you can scan it again before key meetings with upper management. Better still, download the short and sweet Executive Brief .pdf -- you never know when it might be important to share this information. 

 

Numbers of Servers

 

In Windows and x86 Linux environments, ITG explains, separate servers are typically deployed to handle database, application, and Web serving, in addition to test and development systems. These extra servers increase licensing and support costs. ITG notes: 

 

"In smaller installations, between three and five physical x86 servers are required for workloads handled by single Power System. In others, between 6 and 11 physical servers are required for workloads handled by pairs of Power Systems duplexed for redundancy."

 

This increase in tightly integrated simplicity is more important today than ever before, ITG says. Why? Mobile, cloud, and analytic services all draw upon core enterprise data. If core systems suffer from quality of service -- speed or availability -- the ripple effects rapidly extend outward through the organization and beyond. 

 

In fact, ITG goes into detail over costs of downtime and risk exposure, detailing how and why it's important in today's enterprise computing environments. As you might guess, the three year cost of downtime for IBM i-based organizations is significantly less than the others. And by a similar token, security and malware protection are much improved with IBM i over other solutions.

 

All-in-all, "IBM i on Power Systems for Midsize Businesses: Minimizing Costs and Risks for Cloud, Analytics and Mobile Environments" is a report you need to go download from IBM (it's free) right now. Even if you already know or suspect the basics of what's inside the report, it's nice to see it delivered by someone who's spent the time measuring all this through 42 midsize companies.

 

What about larger organizations? Check out ITG's "IBM i on Power Systems for Enterprise Businesses: Value of Resilience for Next-generation Analytics, Cloud, Mobile and Social Media."

 

 

Gewijzigd op 1 dec. 2014 door Chris Maxcer cmaxcer wickedcoolwordsllc@gmail.com

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In the Wheelhouse: Why You Should Invest in In-House IT

In the Wheelhouse: Why You Should Invest in In-House IT

Analysis - Commentary

Written by Steve Pitcher

Monday, 16 June 2014

Who knows what's best for your company's technology future? It's the people in the trenches who get their fingers dirty crawling under your desks: your faithful IT department. And they need to be freed from stagnating budgets.   Why is it so hard to fund the mandatory?   A few months ago, I heard from a peer of mine who was tickled pink because she was able to bring on two new full-time IT resources; one is a developer, and the other is a business intelligence reporting guru. Those are two new positions, not replacements. For a small shop like hers, it's an extremely big deal. By small, I mean they have a CIO, four pure tech people, and two peripheral workers that have IT-related duties. That group supports about 600 users. By a big deal, I mean that it took her close to three years to cost-justify the positions and get them approved. Her department simply had too much work to do and couldn't afford not to do it. If you have a cash-flow problem and need your shingles replaced, you'll bring your brother-in-law over for a weekend and give him a case of cold ones. It needs to be done or the house will eventually suffer.   When you bring someone on as a full-time IT worker, the expectations are high. After all, selling the need for hiring someone for a brand-new position is usually a daunting task.   Why is that?   For starters, IT budgets have been stagnating for years. Since the dot-com bust of 2002, IT budgets have either been flat or negative. 2014 was slated to be on the upswing by about three whole points according to some sources.   Think about that.   With the advent of mobile devices, always-on and always-available solutions, the rise of the mobile worker (I always picture users in Braveheart face paint at my office door when I hear that one), bring your own device (BYOD) social computing, big data, analytics, and every other high-level topic, buzzword, and technology euphemism you can fit into a digital paragraph, the budgets that many of you CIOs, IT managers, or IT directors have had to work with have been sitting still or decreasing.   What do we as IT professionals do? We have been asked to do more with less and turn those corporate problem lemons into solutions lemonade. Some IT departments might even turn water into wine on the odd occasion, but if there's any divine intervention to be had, it's usually not in the budget.   The marketing machine selling the idea of moving to the cloud has been on fire for a couple of years now. You see examples of some large companies that have fired most of their IT staff to move to the cloud, turning an expense of human resources into pure tech-service charges. We see successful outsourcing case studies, and we have no doubt about the benefits, but there are still people somewhere, provisioning accounts and creating virtual servers. And no, a monkey can't do it. These are technical people. The resource pool of technical workers hasn't been shrinking, nor has the cost of paying for IT solutions. The workers are shifting more to the cloud, and companies are paying for cloud computing solutions and services there instead of in-house. In other words, it's a cost shift and not usually a cost reduction.   A strong but simple difference between an in-house technical services staff member and an outsourced service is that the employee has a vested interest in the success of the company. I'd bet you my last nickel that the average IT employee cares more about their company's survivability and sustainability than a contractor would. That's with all due respect to contractors, and I've known quite a few who would answer the phone on New Year's Eve and bail me out of a mess. Those guys are paid handsomely for that too. But the IT employee needs the company to expand, to sell more widgets, to cut costs, to be more environmentally friendly. There's a pride of association you get from in-house workers that you don't get from outsourced solutions.   Yes, IT staff needs to be trained. They need laptops. They need smartphones. They need salaries, health and dental benefits, insurance, and all that extra overhead like every other employee.   What they give in return is not the same as the IT employee of yesteryear. No offense to people who cut their teeth thirty-five years ago, but the job description for a modern IT professional has unofficially morphed into an always-available, always-on, mobile, work from the couch, work from the car on the side of the highway, work from the breakfast/lunch/dinner table, work on vacation, call at 3:00 a.m. to unlock an account or manually fix a process gone sour, 24x7x365, sleep-deprived, factory-formulated, high-test geeky workhorse.   And when they're not doing that, they're trying to plan for the future. Not their future, but the company's future. The IT people worth their weight in gold are looking to pay for themselves every year by implementing cost-saving measures or more efficient solutions. Those people scrutinize process and procedure, looking for ways to make things run faster, leaner, and most importantly, more effectively. They do this in order to justify every budget dollar they get.   What value!   But it's no wonder that many IT departments can't get ahead on all the new stuff coming down the pike. Departmental growth has been stunted with stationary or down budgets. Do more with less works in the short term in times of uncertainty. In the long term, it's a recipe for disaster. Imagine if you didn't invest in maintaining and upgrading machinery that builds your widgets. How long would it take for it to break down? You can only hold a factory together with duct tape for so long before it starts to fall apart.   And if IT doesn't keep up with corporate demands because of a lack of resources, then that's when the outsourcing talk starts.   Of course, cloud computing has an initial cost. You have to spend money to save money, right? That's funny. It sounds like something an IT department might say from time to time. But alas, "it's not in the budget."   Do you see the disconnect?   Many in-house IT shops I know spend much time bailing out the boat and not getting enough resources to patch the holes, let alone outfitting it with sonar, radar, and a new efficient propeller. When the water rises high enough inside the boat, the question is raised about buying a different boat—one that doesn't need someone to steer, or bail out, or put gas into the engines.   The extreme cloud marketing hype is hard to resist. You'd better get on board or else you'll get "left behind." How many times have you heard that mantra repeated over and over? It's using shame to market products and services.   Some research firms will tell you that 75% of companies will be "in the cloud" by 2024. What does that mean? That you'll use a private cloud or public cloud or that you'll allow the use of something like Dropbox or Office 365? It's such a questionable statistic that 75% really means nothing. It probably doesn't mean 75% of companies will be outsourcing their IT departments. Even if it did, I'm calling shenanigans based on the ten-year prediction alone. Where's my new flying Delorean and auto-fitting clothes like in Back to the Future II? Science fiction is unrealistic you say? Hardly. Think of the tech we have now that was inspired by Star Trek.   Those influencing the decision to move are usually far removed from technology, looking at cloud replacement strictly as a cost-cutting measure but with the promises of bells and whistles that in-house IT couldn't provide because they were buried under their workloads (i.e., understaffed) or budget-deficient (i.e., underfunded).   We need to be investing in our IT resources constantly. If you want IT to align with the business and really do something, then you need to fund it properly.   When IT gets the resources to do their jobs, then companies will be rewarded with employees who do their jobs better. IT departments can help. We need to unshackle them.

Steve Pitcher About the Author: Steve Pitcher is the Enterprise Systems Manager for Scotsburn Dairy Group in Nova Scotia, Canada, and is a specialist in IBM i and IBM Lotus Domino solutions since 2001. Visit Steve's Website, follow his Twitter account, or contact him directly at stevepitcher@scotsburn.com.

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IBM Unveils Power 8 For Cloud, Big Data Crunching

IBM Unveils Power 8 For Cloud, Big Data Crunching

Why i for the Casino Industry?

http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh101705-story03.html by Mary Lou Roberts If you frequent a casino and play the slots, roll the dice at the craps table, or double-down when the dealer shows a six at the blackjack table, chances are fairly good that somewhere nearby, an iSeries is chugging away. Even before the OS/400 platform had any of its recent names, the gaming industry has been one of the strongholds for the iSeries and its predecessors.                              In fact, Tom Reilly, vice president and general manager for Eastern North America for Bally Systems, a solution provider to the gaming industry, boasts that 100 percent of all of the casinos in Atlantic City and more than 70 percent of all of the casinos in the industry use an iSeries for something. "There are a wide variety of proven, industry-specific applications that have been cultivated over the years on the iSeries. It's to the point now where a new casino can pretty much be a turnkey startup," says Reilly. Reliability and stability are key ingredients in casino management decision making. After all, as much as any other business, casinos are a 24/7 business. If you've ever been lured by the glittering lights of a big casino, beckoning you to come in, sit down, and part with your money, you probably know that, unlike many more traditional businesses, the action is non-stop. Indeed, there's a lot more going on at 2 a.m. than there is at 2 p.m., though who would know? The design of a casino is cleverly planned (no windows, no clocks) to make sure you've lost all track of time as you lose your money. Reilly stresses the scalability of the iSeries as a major reason for the OS/400 platform's prominence in this industry. "The nature of the casino business involves constant transactions at high volumes. That means you need the high availability that the iSeries can deliver." "The casino gaming industry required stable, secure, and scaleable solutions and infrastructure to support their mission-critical, 24/7 operations," explains Stewart Applbaum, vice president of sales and marketing for iSeries reseller and application software provider Agilysys. "The iSeries, along with the software solutions available to the gaming industry, have proven to support these needs." Also pressing on this industry, as it is for many others, is the constant and vigilant attention that must be paid to regulatory compliance. Those auditors from the Nevada, New Jersey, and other state gaming commissions don't mess around, and changes in gaming regulations keep IT staffs on their toes. So, scalability and flexibility are high priorities, too. All of these attributes are important to Station Casinos, a long-time OS/400 platform user. Marshall Andrews, vice president and CIO for Station Casinos, says the company got its first AS/400 before he was onboard. (He guesses that it might have been around 1993 and the model might have been a D50.) The decision was made, he says, because all of the applications Station Casinos selected--hotel, finance, and purchasing--ran on the AS/400. Andrews underscores all of the reasons that the iSeries is a great choice for the gaming industry. The things that are most important to him include reliability, scalability, vendor strength, and support. "It performs 24 by 7 by 52, so we can serve our guests in the manner that made us the leader in our market and enables us to keep providing more service so we can continue to outpace our competition." Today, Station Casinos has three iSeries systems: three iSeries 825s--two high availability (HA) source machines (one with five out of six processors activated and the other with four out of six) and one HA target machine (with three out of six processors activated)-- in addition to one three-way iSeries 830, and two iSeries 720s. All of these machines use the DB2/400 database (obviously), and the systems are split between OS/400 V5R3 and V5R2 with a total of eight logical partitions. They have a consolidation underway to an i5 570 5/8-way box (which will consolidate the two 825s, the 830, and the two 720s onto that machine) with nine logical partitions acting as the HA source machine; the remaining iSeries 825 3/6-way and 4/6-way machines will be used as HA targets. Applications running on these systems include casino management--the Spin3 Casino Management System, which was "heavily modified and customized by our developers," says Andrews--plus the Lodging Management Systems 1.5 hotel property management from Agilysys, the World suite from Oracle, and additional software modules from the SPSS and Kronos. Other tools and systems software running on the iSeries machines include Vision Solution's Vision Suite 8.1/4.1 for high availability, Aldon's change management software, ACOM's check printing sofyware, Bytware's anti-virus software, ProData Computer Services' DBU database utility, and systems management software from IBM, and Vision Solutions. In addition to the iSeries, Andrews reports that Station Casinos has "numerous Windows servers for file and print services and supporting various gaming applications from Acres Gaming (table-player tracking, race and sports book wagering, kiosks, and so forth) as well as connectivity to applications through Citrix Systems middleware. Andrews says Station Casinos committed to the iSeries, but would consider other platforms "if IBM doesn't continue to make improvements or provide for research and development to add additional business applications." His wish-list for the future also includes better Web integration with RPG/free. Another long-time user of the iSeries is one of the largest casino hotel and gaming establishments in the world with multiple properties in multiple states. Their policies prohibit the mention of their name here, but trust me, if you've ever been to Las Vegas, you've heard of them. The current director of IT has been in the job for three years. He describes the company as "a conglomeration of three companies that each had their respective casino, hotel, and financial systems running on AS/400 and System/38 platforms. These systems date back to the mid-1980s." At that time, "Just about the only game in town was the System/38-based and AS/400-based casino system. Everything else flowed from there." Today, the organization has six mirrored iSeries systems (a total of 12 boxes), with varying hardware configurations running OS/400 V5R2. The vast majority of the casino, hotel management, and financial systems run on these systems. In addition, the data center has some Microsoft SQL Server databases (with which the iSeries applications communicate) for data warehousing and cross-property loyalty systems, and some Tandem fault-tolerant servers running other casino/hotel systems. Unfortunately--for the iSeries community, anyway--the iSeries is short-lived in this organization. This casino is currently transitioning away from the iSeries in favor of .NET-centric applications for the casino applications, and a Windows-based package for hotel applications. "The system that originally spurred the commitment to the iSeries has outlived its usefulness. There was a lot of functionality that the vendor could no longer provide." As a result, the decision was made by internal "Microsoft people" to rewrite the entire application in-house. Given that reliability and stability are perhaps the two most commonly heard attributes that keep casinos on the iSeries platform, is that a concern when moving to Windows? "Very much," this unnamed casino's CIO replies, "but the people who made the decision don't seem concerned. They believe that if there's a problem we can throw hardware at it." Is there anything IBM could do to keep this casino on the iSeries'? "It's too late," our CIO source says. So, with one long-time user that is quite committed to the iSeries for the long-haul, and one long-time user that is making tracks to move off the platform, we come to the story of Avi Resort and Casino, a relative newcomer to the iSeries. Avi's first and current machine, an iSeries 820, was just installed about two years ago to run a new property management application, an application that had previously run on a SCO Unix system. Avi's IT Manager, Stephen Gregg, and his two other IT team members had absolutely no AS/400 or iSeries experience. But in choosing the new property management system, they went through a full selection process that brought them to two finalists: one ran on a Windows platform, and the Agilysys property management solution that runs on the iSeries. What influenced their decision? Gregg was well aware of the predominance of the iSeries in the casino/gaming industry and had heard for years about the stability of the platform. In fact, Gregg laughingly tells the story of installing some network PCs back in the 1980s (working in another job) for long-time AS/400 advocate, John Keyes, founder of Computer Keyes. Gregg asked Keyes at the time what he was going to do with all those "big IBM boxes" when everything was replaced by Windows and smaller servers, and Keyes just laughed at him. "I was full of myself back then," says Gregg. "Now, I know that John was right. He told me the AS/400 would survive." Given that no one in Gregg's organization, including himself, had any iSeries expertise, how easy was the transition? Gregg admits that, at the start, he was a little intimidated. "But now it's great. It only took between three and six months until we got to the point where we were fully adept at using the system." What makes the iSeries a good choice for the casino/gaming industry? Keeping in mind his background as a Windows expert, Gregg's answer is interesting. Of course, he names stability, reliability, and ease of use--the same features touted by just about all iSeries boosters. "The application developers in the iSeries space represent a base of people who recognize and care about the quality of the product," he points out. "Developers in the Windows community are clearly catering to a base that wants to spend less money." Furthermore, Gregg is delighted with the iSeries support that he receives from his three biggest vendors and suppliers, IBM, Agilysys, and Bally Systems. Now Gregg is looking forward to upgrading to an i5 520, which he anticipates will be installed by December. In addition to property management--the application that triggered the move to the iSeries--Avi has now moved its player-tracking system to the iSeries. The slot accounting system is still running on an RS/6000 Unix box and, for the time being, it's likely to stay there. However, Gregg hopes that, "Ultimately we many have all of our applications running on the same iSeries box in different partitions." In fact, Gregg has big plans for the iSeries in his shop. Around the first of next year, its materials management system will be moved onto the iSeries. They will still have the back-of-the-house accounting system, the human resources system, and time and attendance on Windows and Novell servers, but Gregg plans eventually to move everything over to the iSeries. Interestingly enough, although a relative newcomer to the iSeries, Gregg sometimes sounds more like a dyed-in-the-wool, old-time AS/400 advocate. Don't even talk to him about WebFacing! "I can't think of any changes I want made to the iSeries," he says. "But there are some changes taking place that I'm resistant to, and one is WebFacing in front of a green screen. Sure, the GUI interface is nice and warm and fuzzy, but the green screen is more efficient. Give me two experienced check-in clerks--one with the GUI and one with the green screen--and the one with the green screen will check more guests in more quickly. And, I have fewer potential failure points." Even with some defections from the platform, it's likely that the iSeries will continue to be a mainstay in the gaming industry for the foreseeable future. As Agilysys' Applbaum says, "As the size of these operations continue to grow, the repercussion of solutions going down has great financial impact on businesses. Agilysys customers could realize losses in the millions for even the shortest downtimes. The iSeries provides the most reliable and available server platform for the software solutions that support these businesses." When I began this story, I did not set out to find three casinos with such different profiles--one long-time user still committed to the platform; one long-time user moving to Windows; and one shop new to the platform with all the enthusiasm and evangelism of the newly converted. It was somewhat a matter of chance that their stories fell this way. It may be, however, that these three casino industry customers accurately portray a microcosm of the complexity of the iSeries landscape. It's no secret that one reason for the initial success of the platform was the ISV applications base. The tasty meal that brought users to the iSeries table in the first place was not the wonders of OS/400 or even the reliability and stability that they now value so highly; it was the availability of applications and the strength of the ISVs who delivered and supported those applications. Love of the box itself came later. While IBM is out doing its best to win over new accounts (and clearly making some inroads in that department, with about 3,000 new customers in 2004 and maybe double that in 2005), how many are they losing because, while they were in the barn milking the cash cow for so many years, Microsoft stole the bull? Is it too late to get the message out? Are the programs that shore up those ISVs, enabling them to pump more development dollars into reviving the applications, coming too late? We'll find out. Mary Lou Roberts, a 35-year veteran of the information systems industry, is a new contributor to IT Jungle. In addition to her work as a reporter in the iSeries space, she has spent her career as a marketing and communications professional working exclusively with information technology publications and companies. She can be reached at WriterNewf@aol.com.

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