You and i – IBM i Strategy Overview

The IBM i strategy is most often communicated in two very different ways: in the IBM i Strategy and Roadmap whitepaper[1], and in presentations.  Each of those methods has its appropriate uses.  This blog entry represents a third way.  In this blog, I want to write about the strategy in much the same way as I’d talk about it, if you were listening to me giving a presentation, but because it’s a blog post in a series of posts, I can organize my explanation differently – in “bite sized” topics.  So, let’s get to it. 

The Three Principles of the IBM i Strategy

The strategy for IBM i is built around three foundational ideas – three principles which guide the decisions we make about IBM i.  What are the three guiding principles of IBM i’s strategy, and why are they part of it?

If you were listening to me give a presentation, I’d show you a chart that looks something like this:[2]

Power Solutions

The first guiding principle of the IBM i strategy recognizes two things:

• Clients use IBM i because of the software: the solutions – which run on IBM i and which implement their business processes.

Each time we consider adding something new to IBM i, the very first thing we ask is “what value does this give to the solutions which run on IBM i and/or the people developing those solutions?”  Why?  Because we know that, while the architecture of IBM i is great, it’s the combination of that architecture with how the solutions take advantage of it that provides real value.  To get value to clients, we have to get value to the solutions.

• IBM i runs on Power-based hardware. It may seem obvious, but as we build our strategy, we need to plan for future versions of the Power processor, and its related I/O, memory and so on, so that IBM i can continue to take advantage of it.

But that’s not all the strategic information you can infer from “Power Solutions” being a fundamental principle.  There’s another important point:

The segment of the Power business which is served by IBM i – the “IBM i ecosystem” – is differentiated from the rest of the Power market by the value the operating system provides to those solutions, and that segment is critically important to IBM’s Power-based business.  In many ways, IBM’s Power strategy treats each of its operating systems equally, but in some very important ways, IBM i gets special treatment, because the operating system, the client set, the partners – the entire “IBM i ecosystem” – are best served when the unique nature of that ecosystem is factored into our decisions.

So, the first principle is packed with meaning and direction, and focuses on clients, and the solutions those clients use on IBM i.  I’ll go more deeply into that part of the strategy in a separate post, but for now, it’s time to move on to the second principle.

Open Platform for Choice

The most important word in the second principle is “Choice.”

We build IBM i to give clients choices on how to move forward – from where ever they are, to where ever they need to go.  If we want every client to gain value from new technology, we need to help ech of them start from where they are.  And that means giving them options.

In order to provide the many options which might be valuable to clients, we invest in our own technology, and we also reach out to the open community for value. 

And this applies to more than just the technology used in creating the business solutions!  It also applies to how the IBM i operating system is managed.  But I’ll get into that in the deeper post about this principle.  For now, let’s leave it here: IBM i is committed to giving clients choices, and we often use open technology to do provide some of those choices. 

Again, there is more to say about this principle, but I’ll do that in a deeper post. 

The Integrated Promise of IBM i

This third principle is also deeper than it might appear, but the key point is that when IBM i adopts a new technology, we integrate it as best we can when we first introduce it, and we improve that level of integration over time.  It’s our history and it’s our promise for the future.  The unique IBM i architecture provides value to any technology which can be integrated into it – security, reliability, ease of use, low total cost of ownership – all of these improve as a new technology gets integrated. 

Summary

These three principles have been guiding the IBM i strategy for many years – and have been specifically stated this way since 2008.  My firm belief is that a good strategy can remain quite stable – changing very little from year to year – if its guiding principles shine a light on the path which should be taken in order to achieve success.  The years since the early 2000’s have been characterized by rapidly changing technology.  The IBM i strategy has allowed us to evaluate those changes, anticipate many of them, adapt to the rest, and continue to provide value to IBM and to IBM i’s community.  I fully expect it to remain helpful into the IBM i future.

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[1] The link to the current version of the “IBM i Strategy and Roadmap” white paper is here: http://bit.ly/IBMiWhitePaper

[2] Typically, the chart would have more words than this version has.  I am writing this as the first of my “anchor posts,” so I’ve chosen to focus on the three principles – the three “top level bullets” here, and then I’ll write in more detail about each principle in its own post.