In the world of IT, technology evolves every day and as such applications/software older than 2-3 years start to become legacy or out of date to some. Therefore, it’s important to keep one eye on the new OS releases from day 0, not to move to it straight away, but to have a roadmap in place to work towards and a timeframe to execute.
As we look at the Fortra study, where the “IBM i Skills gap” and “Security” are the top 2 concerns, this is where you need to be looking at IBM Power11 and IBM i 7.6 with MFA built into the operating system. It’s not because it’s the latest version, but as technology advances so can your business from your competitors. As technology adopters you will be ‘ready to go’ when the time is right.
Furthermore, to address the IBM i skills gap raised in the Fortra study, you can mitigate this by adopting IBM VS Code in your programming, aiding younger generations of programmers to assist with adoption. With the recent release of IBM watsonx code assistant for i and huge selection of plugins already available for VS Code for IBMi this is the strategic way forward. You are highly likely to find your organization is already using VS Code for non IBMi development like ansible, php, python and will champion your adoption faster.
The challenge faced by many is understanding what the roadmap looks like. For example, if you are using additional software like IBM WebSphere or others, do you have the up-to-date certified releases by IBM i ? You need to ensure that you understand your options early to plan a smooth transition to unlock the technology when you are ready and not because your competitors already are. This way you are having to place catch up.
And lastly if you are still thinking of the IBM i as the ‘AS/400’ then my ask is, review your stance by watching the following video “IBM Power modernisation”. Yes, your legacy applications will still function, but they can still be modern and run your critical day to day business, enabling you to collaborate and do more. In an environment where we need to do more with less, this is a golden opportunity to embrace and enable that journey. I say journey because it’s not an overnight switch, but the door to new heights with IBM Power11 and beyond, which “Raises the Bar for Enterprise IT”
If you’d like to discuss this further, then email me at [email protected]
