I’m ex rpg programmer in AS400 environment and now working in UNIX environment with oracle and sequel and so on and so on.

Here is my view:
Machine is good as much as performance of the machine can be presented to executives. Here is one problem. Many people who still working on the machine do not know half of the functions IBM added to the machine and operating system over the years and the worst many of them never heard about it. I tried to push many of the new features but I almost was pushed out of the company.
To resolve this problem IBM in my opinion has to set up machines with all possible features which all programmers can access for small monthly fee and use for their development. Plus set up online curses very affordable to programmers to learn all new things.
This will create army of salesmen’s for IBM who’s only interest is going to be keep their jobs and may be got promoted for just using skills they gained over the years and can build on and not starting from scratch. Plus this will enable a lot of programmers to create thousands of programming tools and software for the machine at very affordable prices for the companies and are going to try to sell to companies by convincing them to keep existing machine or by new one.
IBM will still make money by charging from companies like Microsoft or Oracle who are giving to individual people for little money or free but making money from companies.

There are effectively no IBM sales people for anything i. What did exist in the recent past for actual S&D was minimal, mostly in support of VARs and BPs to do the selling for IBM. For its TCA alone, the OS is not an easy sell for anyone, because too many potential buyers see only the TCA regardless of the amount of true benefits being told about what the i5/OS offers. The perception that the OS is “old” while having such a high price as compared to others, leaves them turned off. The OS can only be sold when there is an absolutely best-fit application being sold. If that exact same application is available on another system, only then can the distinguishing benefits that the i5/OS can offer be made as a great selling point. But consider, What incentive does a seller have to make that point? Actually selling the application on i5/OS ensures that they will have very little consulting and other service revenue streams after the sale. It is not because they do not understand the OS, quite the contrary, it is because they do know the OS that they actually prefer not to sell. IBM would need to be content to sell to the niche that will not generate huge revenue streams from services, and the sales people would have to be from within IBM. The sellers outside of IBM do not make enough money on just the initial sale to make their sale of a Power System with i5/OS worthwhile in profits. They need to know they will have a continuous revenue stream that follows the sale. They currently already sell to the niche noted above, but only as a last resort, because they know or sense that the customer is in that niche.

And my buddies in iSeries Development here in Rochester wonder why they’re always getting cuts and why iSeries revenues don’t grow. IBM markets hardware, middleware and services. It doesn’t know how to market a killer operating system like i5OS. This won’t turn around till sales people can make as much money selling i5OS as they do selling piece parts, and understand the iSeries well enough to know that to be the case. i5OS is either priced incorrectly, or not understood by the sales force.