This page has been created to help I.T. departments using an AS400, iSeries, i5 or IBM i for Power Systems to counter any arguments from new executives or competitors that want to sway the decision-makers at your company to switch to a different platform. Hopefully by putting all of the counter-arguments in one place it will make it easier to convince your company to stay on the platform until it's ready to move up to the latest version of the platform in our ecosystem, which looks like it will be called Cognitive Systems at this time.
A. Point - No one is using the system anymore.
B. Point - The platform isn't be robust enough to support our future growth.
Counterpoint - If you didn't download the Company List to refute the first point, then click here and download it now. Select the companies that have 'Yes' in the Fortune 500 and the most recent 3 years. Then point out that if it's robust enough to support them then there's no reason it won't be able to support yours. This might also be a good time to point out that another reason these companies might have chosen the platform is because it can be set up to be the one of the most secure and reliable systems on the planet.
C. Point - It's getting harder and harder to find people to support the platform because it's so old.
Counterpoint - Click on this link. Once this board is active you'll be able to click on a job title and see a list of everyone who's looking for a job in that area. It will also give you a total count of people who have that skill. At that point you'll be able to say, 'Here are 100 people who can fill that spot right now, and there are another couple of thousand out there who will be able to fill it in the future.
D. Point - It's a legacy system that can only do green screens - modern user interfaces aren't supported.
Counterpoint - The following sites were built completely with just this platform.
E. Point - Only old languages like RPG and COBOL can be used to write programs on the platform.
Counterpoint - Not true. In addition to those languages programs can be written in Java, PHP, C, C++, Python, Perl, REXX, Pascal, Smalltalk, SQL, Basic, Fortran, Ruby, Javascript and PL/1.
Counterpoint - There are at least 50,000 companies, over 15,000 of whom have been confirmed as still using the platform in the 2019 - 2021 date range, on the list that can be downloaded by clicking here. After downloading the list select your industry and the most recent 3 years. Then point out some of your larger competitors and that however much of your company's budget is spent on basically moving sideways your competitors can use to grab market share away from your company by not making the same move.
Counterpoint - Not true. You can run a number of platforms on it - Linux, AIX and Windows environments can all be running on it at the same time too.
Also, these other technologies can be run on the platform - a native HTTP server, Apache, Tomcat and others, meaning it's a server for web pages and web development. CSS, HTML and Javascript can be used for web pages too.
This is not intended to be shown 'as is' to your company's decision-makers. It has been put together to provide you with enough information for you to create an Executive Summary tailored to your company.
F. Point - With IBM, you're stuck with a propietary operating system that can't run things like Linux.
F. Point - With IBM, you're stuck with a propietary operating system that can't run things like Linux.
