Angus' Blog

IBMi25 campaign

Angus — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:00:47 +0000

The IBM i 25 event is to recognize and celebrate the 25th anniversary of the IBM i platform. It has many events and activities, all around the world. This page is an index of the activities around the event on the web.

You are the source of your own complaint!

Angus — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:19:15 +0000

One of the loudest complaints about the branding for our platform is that you cannot google the name. Certainly, you would be foolish to think you could google the letter “i” – which happens to be the actual brand name. The answer is simple: you google “IBM i” – quotes or not.

I contend that until we start using “IBM i” in our internet correspondence, we won’t be able to google anything. However, it seems that people are starting to get the concept. Many vendors are leading with “IBM i” on their websites, in their blogs, and in their marketing materials.

Yet, there are still many posters who forget that simple concept. Just this week, I read a thread on midrange-L titled “SSL and public facing web site on the i“. How will any google search find this? Even the content had no mention of “IBM i”, so in the final google result, this discussion will be lost for all time. We have to pay attention to this, especially if we are the ones complaining about the lack of google results!

Even the press in our “IBM i” industry tend to be conflicted about this concept. IT Jungle’s Dan Burger wrote a great article about the future of our platform, and used a neat title “i Is For Investment“. Of course, in the fourth sentence of the first paragraph, Dan mentions “IBM i”. And, it is mentioned thirteen more times in the article. Google will find it, but without the title including the branding, the importance level of this article in the search results will be much reduced.

The answer is twofold. 1. Stop complaining about not being able to google for information about our platform. 2. Start using “IBM i” in your discussion titles, your comments – all your public-facing internet correspondence.

Very soon, we will find our world has less complaining and far more information!

Community leaders! Step UP, not back…

Angus — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 16:09:44 +0000

To {your-name-here}, a community leader,

Would you consider assisting some of the rest of us in the community? We are trying to make a move from the old branding. Several years ago, we asked the manager/s of AS/400 Professionals LinkedIn group to upgrade the name of the group, and they flat out refused. All efforts since then, by various people, have failed to raise awareness of the fact that the platform is IBM i and runs on a new hardware server.

Our concern is that while some of our community doggedly stick to the old naming, those people also stick to old techniques of development and methodology. This leads to a perception in companies that our technology is outdated, and leads to more replacement of IBM i with non-IBM i solutions. Our efforts are to encourage the community to overcome their stubbornness and realize that the future of our platform is IBM i. Our efforts are to get those who see it as an AS/400 or iSeries, to see the platform in its current form – an OS that supports their OS/400 and i5/OS applications, but does so much more. A simple example is Live Partition Mobility – not something that can be done on an AS/400, and is one of the many amazing things that can be supported with IBM i.

To raise awareness of this, we have a quandary. Vendors specifically, need access to as much of their constituency as they can. AS/400 Professionals has almost 15,000 members. IBM i Professionals has more than 4,500 members, and both are growing around the same amount each week. Vendors need access to the “extra” 10,000 (or maybe 12,000 who don’t overlap?), so they want these people to listen to them. IBM wants to talk to them. Yet, most of them don’t see the platform as IBM i – thus, the quandary.

So, we need to make the AS/400 Professionals members aware that IBM i is our future. There have been various attempts to do so, but each of them has reached a complete pushback and negative reaction from the noisy members, those stuck far back in the AS/400 cave. One of the methods proposed is to leave the group in droves – but as I said, vendors feel they cannot, so the membership is growing. Another of the methods is to stop posting in the group – that appears to have failed also. The third way has been a little more successful, but needs to gain traction – someone posts an article or discussion in another group, and in AS/400 Professionals, posts a link to the discussion in the other group. That tends to have some more members join the other groups, so it works for awareness. In the long run, of course, we would simply like the AS/400 Professionals group to be renamed, and since they won’t, it needs to fade into history. And, as you are a proponent of our platform, surely you have some other ideas?

Unfortunately, there are prominent members of our community who continue to answer questions and contribute to discussions in the AS/400 Professionals group. You are one of them. You are visible, and you are regularly commenting in that group. The concept is, that while you continue to do so, you are promoting the thought that AS/400 is current, and that it is ok to continue to promote AS/400 (or is that de-mote?). This is not supporting the future of our platform, rather, it is telling the people who are stubbornly refusing to go beyond the AS/400 that it is ok to do so. And it simply isn’t.

Our community needs its leaders to support the future of our platform, otherwise, we simply don’t have a future. The tide is finally turning with vendors, who are now realizing that they should promote IBM i products and services, even though the audience is mixed between IBM i and AS/400 bigots. We need some people pushing forward, and that group is growing. Unfortunately, every time {your name here} posts an answer in AS/400 Professionals, it makes the rest of us have to work that much harder to combat “the name doesn’t matter” myth.

The name does matter, because it makes the world look at the platform differently. If outsiders see it as an AS/400, they won’t come. If graduates see it being used like an AS/400, they won’t come. If our own developers see it as an AS/400, they won’t move forward, and we will lose more. We need the community to promote IBM i and its future, and we need your help.

Can you assist in moving the perception of our platform from AS/400 to IBM i? It is time…

Learn a new tool or three..

Angus — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:25:36 +0000

Part of the excitement of being in the Information Technology industry is that we get to be privy to the fabulous stuff that runs the world. Having been a computer geek of some form or another since high school, having had one of the first generation of IBM PCs, along with having an IT consulting career, I have witnessed so much of the history of computing. I am constantly amazed by what is new at every turn. The iPad changed the world. QR codes came, were predicted to have a short life, and are now pervasive. Connecting the world is getting easier. Communicating with friends, family and spammers is a snap. Voice recognition will probably disappear as bond conduction technology improves. Finger gestures on a tablet will move to the air. Technology amazes, surprises, and constantly changes.

However, there are some amongst the IT faithful who still use a hammer to solve every problem. All around us, we see new technology that can be used for our businesses. There are new methodologies, new development techniques, and tools that can improve our agility and the agility of our applications, and turn IT into an effective strategic business partner.

And then, I attend a user group conference or meeting in the IBM i community. I am told about how the AS/400 rocks. I am told how iSeries is the best platform IBM sells. I am told how “I don’t like the name, so I ain’t using it”. On a technical mailing list, a reply to a post with “IBM i” in the title contains the words “on the System i”. References are made to a platform that is dead, one that is almost gone, and one that has been forgotten. And none of those is as amazing, surprising, or evolving as IBM i on Power.

What happened to our community? The overall general confusion of using outdated branding simply looks like we don’t care about our platform enough to learn about our platform. Yet, each of these ignorant iBlasphemers claims to love love love this incredible platform. They state that it is the best on the planet. Which begs the question: If your platform is so great, what would happen if they upgraded it to something new and more incredible? Wouldn’t you want to move to that MORE incredible technology?

Well, IBM i is. All that you could do on your wonderful AS/400, incredible iSeries, fabulous System i, is available on the amazing, wonderful, fabulous IBM i on Power. If you don’t already have IBM i on Power, your next upgrade to a new server will bring you there, and your next upgrade to a used server will get you closer. IBM i is your platform, it is the current platform IBM is evolving, and your toolbelt should contain more than just the hammer of “I don’t like the name”.

As IT Professionals, isn’t it our own responsibility to keep up with technology? When you utter the out of date branding as though it were a new thing, your hammer is showing. After FIVE years of IBM i, your hammer is rusty. The buildings you are creating will topple at the first wind, and no one wants to live in them any more. Arm yourself with a little knowledge and make this community whole once more. To build a future on modern technology, rediscover your passion for IT, and you will find your passion for IBM i will be sparked.

Wallow in our future.

Angus — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:50:13 +0000

During this week’s COMMON Annual conference, it was refreshing to see how the IBMi25 campaign, simply by its existence, stirred more of the community to reference the platform by its current branding. The speakers, for the most part, have upped their game, and this too, impacted the community in a positive way. There are still some holdouts, making various (ignorant, IMO) excuses, but that is almost gone from this event. Vendors are slowly getting their act together, and the number of booths with some past branding was reduced from previous events. When confronted about their lack of support for the ~actual~ platform, there was the usual (ignorant, IMO) stable of excuses.

For my part, I talked with several vendors about the difference between marketing a product and marketing to an audience (see my blog titled Marketing in the 21st IBM i century!), and it resonated very well. I think this is a successful approach to having vendors understand that their support for our platform is better served by leading with IBM i and understanding SEO to attract those customers who are as yet, unaware of the incredible combination of IBM i on Power Systems.

Other IBM i pundits, including some of the IBM Power Champions, approached vendors with their own thoughts on modernizing their branding vernacular and supporting the future of our platform. It seems that until vendors realize that their outdated marketing efforts are keeping customers in the dark and causing harm to the future of IBM i, there will still be a need to confront their activities with some strength.

It is true that some vendors either do not understand marketing, or have incompetent or unqualified marketers, or simply trust their marketing to their sales organization. In all these cases, they do not realize that IBM i on Power Systems is a new paradigm – an OS running on the best business hardware in the world, and an OS that will support and run all the applications running on your “old” platform. They seem to be confused when one person utters an old brand name, and being unarmed with the facts of the platform evolution, choose to ignore the obvious fact that with a very small amount of education, they could not only convince the customer or prospect of the value of an upgrade to IBM i, they might engender a solid amount of excitement and passion for our beloved platform.

In my case, I began a Twitter campaign using the hashtag #IBMiStepUp – see more in my blog post titled Step up to IBM i!. When I see a vendor with a particularly abhorrent campaign or website, an #IBMiStepUp tweet will call them out and encourage them to lead with IBM i. One vendor in particular – who does well in support of our platform, has a specific marketing campaign that includes a daily “IBM i” online paper. They informed me I would be excluded from that campaign.. er.. paper, because I was a bully. Since then, none of my tweets from my angustheitchap handle will appear in their “paper”. As it turns out, they have also filtered out (censored?) other IBM i champions and tweeters from their “paper”. This seems to me to be quite wrong – advertising an “IBM i” publication that is nothing more than a marketing campaign for their own company, disguised as support for the community. If it were named for their company, it would not be as heinous, but it is simply one more example of the community having to sort through vendor FUD.

This community deserves more from its leaders, speakers, pundits, and vendors. The first step is realizing that IBM i on Power Systems is a new paradigm, and the one that is our future. No matter your current platform, you will/should soon be upgrading to IBM i on Power. The more leaders, speakers, pundits, and vendors who talk about the old branding, the more our customer base will believe there is no future, and the more will be convinced to leave the platform entirely. If this is not clear by now, the fifth anniversary of Power Systems and IBM i, then it has to become obvious and the focus for our leaders, speakers, pundits, and vendors.

Last week on Twitter, one vendor defended their use of old branding to sell modern technology by claiming they were “Switzerland in the name game”. Ironically, by saying there is a name game, they actually engaged in it – engaging in war is not neutrality.

If you are a leader, speaker, pundit, vendor, customer, developer or any other kind of interested community member, then it is time to stop the noise. Any time you respond to the use of the old branding with the new branding (with no argument needed), you are educating and promoting our future. Any time you respond in a forum that is branded for the past, you have an opportunity to educate and promote the future (with no argument needed). Any time you drop the old vernacular, recognize and respond to the old with the future, you are educating and promoting our platform.

Isn’t it time you stepped up? Stop engaging in a game that should have been put to bed five years ago when IBM upped theirs. Move away from the vernacular of the past, which by its nature supports a mentality of living, developing, and promoting the past. Find the place where you are comfortable in talking about your platform in modern and future terms – which will start when the current branding becomes native to your own brain.

It is time to wallow in our future.

Time to stop the rhetoric

Angus — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:43:29 +0000

The 20i3 COMMON Annual conference is being held in Austin, TX this week. IBM have brought their IBM i 25th Anniversary celebrations. With that, the excitement in the community in attendance has been stirred, the passion is high, and the conference is buzzing.

There are, as usual, some holdouts. One prominent vendor is advertising their System i products – I stuck an IBM i sticker over that. Several vendors are promoting iSeries solutions, and attendees are generally giving them grief. The excuses range from “the customers call it that, so I have to” to “the platform is dead” to “IBM i is just iSeries”.

All of these excuses are utterly ignorant, showing that the vendors do not understand marketing a product as opposed to marketing to an audience. Their marketing skills seem to resort to poor selling techniques when their first response to the “why iSeries” question is not a question, but a defense born of frustration.

Certainly, vendors – and the community, need to understand and learn how to market IBM i products to an audience which includes IBM i customers, iSeries customers, AS/400 customers, and the occasional System i customer. However, this should not preclude them from understanding that while we have a strong legacy (proven) starting with the AS/400, we have had IBM i on Power Systems (which is a NEW platform, BTW) for five years.

IBM i has proven its longevity. While customers may be holding out, vendors have a responsibility to educate, support, and promote IBM i – the future of our platform. They must upgrade their marketing. And, the ignorant defense of “thats what the customer calls it” needs to be removed from the equation. If you are a leader in our community, you will be a leader, not a follower.

And the rhetoric of “the platform is dead” or “the platform has no future” or “the platform is dying” needs to simply be dropped from the vernacular of those vendors who are in this industry for the long term. Not a whisper, not a mention, not a hint of that FUD should be uttered from anyone in our community.

Then, when we hear that FUD, we know it is coming from those who wish to migrate us from the platform, and we can act accordingly.

Twenty five

Angus — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:30:28 +0000

I will have been in the United States for 25 years on May 15th, 20i3. I was working as a System/38 consultant, teaching RPG and SYNON, and working on midrange ERP applications, when I was offered a job and upon accepting, moved to Chicago. Last week in Manhattan, I had dinner with the owners of the company who brought me to the U.S. It was a wonderful evening, reminiscing and catching up. Our conversation were also very lively about the future of computing, devices, applications, user experience and I.T. in general. Our shared past is very special to us, and our shared passion for the world of I.T. means we will remain friends for many years to come.

I feel very much the same way about IBM i and the community around the platform. A month after I arrived in Chicago in 1988, the AS/400 was announced. Of course, much of the community were aware of something happening at IBM (named Silverlake) that would affect S/38 and S/36 customers, and there was huge excitement in the industry to match the announcement from IBM. Twenty years later, with the merger of System i and System p hardware into Power Systems we were reminded of how amazing our AS/400 was. IBM, however, continued the amazing, evolving OS/400 into IBM i – an operating system worthy of our heritage, and built to run on the new industry leading Power Systems servers. In the last five years, our new home has proven to be a hardware platform on which we have a strong future. IBM i will celebrate its 25th anniversary in world class shape, leveraging an incredible heritage. For our community, our shared past is very special, and our shared passion for IBM i means we will remain friends for many years to come.

I am excited to watch – and participate – in the IBM i 25th anniversary celebrations. You can be engaged in many ways, and Steve Will starts the ball rolling with his latest You and I blog entry.

And, while you are muddling around on Facebook today, like the IBMi25 page for even more continuing action. See you in Austin for the in-person celebrations!

Marketing in the 21st IBM i century!

Angus — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 16:03:17 +0000

If IBM i really is the best platform on the planet, why are people trying to sell its predecessors?

For all the IBM i vendors, recruiters and other parties, here are two basic questions for you related to marketing to the IBM i community:

What are you marketing?
To whom are you marketing?

I hear the same (tired old) complaints about our community, in that they mostly do not call the platform by its current branding. Many customers I visit do refer to the platform as AS/400, iSeries or System i, and occasionally something more obscure like i5. The marketer response has been that “we have to cater for all these perspectives”. And, to cater for that audience, marketers use various names for the product they are pitching, thinking that will attract the audience they desire. Instead, it makes them look like they are trying to sell coal to fuel a gas heater.

It is important to distinguish WHAT you are marketing from the audience TO WHOM you are marketing. Using an old platform name to attract an audience, is like trying to sell a Windows tablet by calling it a DOS computer. A skilled marketer would be selling a Windows tablet by marketing to everyone – including a Windows audience and a DOS audience. But they would never market something by its old branding.

So, it is time for marketing teams in our IBM i community to get their act together. It is time to start marketing the hell out of IBM i. Instead of changing the branding in a poor attempt to attract the desired audience, we should be marketing IBM i products, events, jobs, etc, to an IBM i, System i, iSeries and AS/400 audience. Using buzzwords and old branding should not be the focus – instead, it should be a means to attract an audience to the cool, new and exciting things that IBM i represents.

Find your IBM i product, and market it to the IBM i, iSeries, AS/400 and System i audience.

Confused?

Angus — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 23:13:45 +0000

Here is a little clarification.

The IBM i branding is so easy!

When you speak, say i.
When you write, use IBM i.

What the branding is not:

IBM i™
“i”
IBM “i”
IBM/i
iOS
i/OS
IBM i ~~AS/400~~
Power i
Power IBMi
IBMi (ex AS400)

What the branding never was:

i5
sys/i
whatever they call it today..

What the branding was, once upon a time:

Last century:
- AS/400
- OS/400
Early this century:
- iSeries
- eServer iSeries
- System i5
- System i
- i5/OS

What the brand name is:

What Google will never find:

What Google will find:

IBM i

What Google needs for the most common searches:

IBM i (Power Systems software supporting AS/400, iSeries, and System i applications)

(Borrowed from the current title of the IBM i home page).

What the Twitter hashtag is:

#IBMi

In summary:

Speak	Write	Market
i	IBM i	IBM i (Power Systems software supporting AS/400, iSeries, and System i applications)

It is so easy, it bears repeating..

Speak i.
Write IBM i.

Start your day with a new attitude towards the platform you love!

i,i,i,i!

Step up, stand up – for what you believe..

Angus — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:06:35 +0000

Last week, a video was posted about COMMON, A User’s Group. In the middle of it, a retired IBMer refers to himself as a RiP – which he says means Retired iSeries Professional. Several people excused him, because they said he had retired when it was an iSeries. Unfortunately, he retired since IBM i was released, and he was an IBMer. Both of these mean he should be familiar with the branding. Retired or not, this is an oversight and a lack of support for the platform.

The video was posted on Facebook, and my name was tagged as being in the video. So, I politely asked “What’s an iSeries?”. The ensuing witless vitriol was far more than I expected. This particular IBM i ‘pundit’ apparently feels rather threatened by my words, and turned those three words into some kind of personal attack upon his person. I attempted to point out that his claim of “the only thing that changed in the past 23 years is the name and the color” was false, but his additional responses simply showed more of his ignorance about the platform.

Ignorance, it seems, is the problem in the community. Working with customers on this platform who still think it is an AS/400 or iSeries, and still code in the same manner as they always have, is difficult when I challenge their belief systems. I understand it makes them feel inadequate, and that my encouragement to modernize makes them feel they have done something horribly wrong, but all I am asking them to do is to educate themselves on the platform. I am working to provide a means of education for our community, and at the aforementioned COMMON conference, I will be presenting a session on exactly that topic.

In the meantime, what frustrated me more than the bullying of the responder on Facebook, was the complete and utter silence from every other reader. Most of the people I know in the community are aware that “the only thing that changed in the past 23 years is the name and the color” is beyond ignorant, utterly false, and promoting the wrong message. And, given that several people were tagged in the Facebook thread, many people would have read this statement. Not a single one responded to correct this ignorance. Not one. Certainly, it is difficult for some people to engage in any kind of emotional debate, any argument, or any controversy on public forums. But, by not correcting this falsehood, it remains out there with only one voice to negate it. The strength in numbers rule would apply here, and if four, five or ten people were to post a note to disagree with this incorrect information, how powerful would that have been?

The problem remains that we are scared of bullies, and cyberspace is one of them. And, activity that does not fit your own personal worldview can be downright scary. I have been accused of bullying with my #IBMiStepUp twitter campaign, from someone who could not stand the heat of being identified as a poor marketer. They lashed out at me, and no one stepped up to defend my position. Yet, it is quite a simple thing to do – post a response to negate the BS, FUD, crap and lies being spread about our platform. I expect we have a catch-22 – no one wants to take the first step, for fear of getting into an argument that they cannot get out of.

But… it is quite simple. If you love the platform, then it takes no time at all to defend and promote it. One sentence to stand up for what is right, 140 characters to fix some misinformation, and then stop. There is no need to take on the ignorant in an all-out battle. Simply state the case FOR the platform, and step down. Soon, the voice of the community will be heard in more places. Take that first step. Go on, step up! Stand up for what you believe. Your platform needs you.