The Carrot: i5/OS V5R4 Gets Execution Stay Until May

Published: January 10, 2011

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Just after The Four Hundred went on break back in December, IBM gave iSeries and System i shops that are still using--and very likely still happily using in very many cases--the i5/OS V5R4 operating system on their machines a holiday present. All wrapped up in announcement letter 210-440 is a stay of execution for V5R4, which was slated to have its plug pulled on January 7 of this new year.

V5R4 is probably the most popular operating system in the AS/400-i installed base right now, and I would guess that OS/400 V5R3, which went off tech support in April 2009, is probably as popular as the more current i 6.1 and i 6.1.1 releases and considerably more prevalent than the i 7.1 release from last year that was tailored for the Power7-based systems (although it runs on earlier Power5, Power5+, Power6, and Power6+ machinery). V5R4 first started shipping in January 2006 and was launched concurrently with the System i machines based on dual-core Power5+ processors. V5R4 is important because its guts are compatible with prior V4 and V5 versions of releases of the OS/400 family of operating systems for IBM midrange boxes, while i 6.1, like V3R7 back in the CISC-to-RISC transition in 1995 through 1996 and the shift from the System/38's Control Program Facility (CPF) to the original OS/400 in 1988, requires customers to convert their existing RPG and COBOL programs to run on different licensed internal code. This code, known as LIC and a kind of virtual machine that abstracts the underlying iron and preserves program compatibility despite large changes in underlying hardware, is one of the key differentiators of the AS/400 architecture. IBM never explained why it made such big changes with i 6.1, but clearly the virtual picture of the iron in V5R4 and earlier versions of the i5/OS and OS/400 platform no longer resolved to the radically different iron in the Power7 generations.

Because program conversion from V5R4 to i 6.1, i 6.1.1 (an interim release with Power7 support), and i 7.1 (a release truly tuned for Power7 iron) is a hassle and many IBM midrange shops were on tight budgets in 2008 and 2009, when the transition was expected to occur, I believe that the installed base of i shops is abnormally sitting tight with V5R4 and lagging in the move to i 6.1 or i 7.1.

Why do I believe this? Well, IBM first sunsetted V5R4 back on January 27, 2009, in announcement letter 909-003, saying it would no longer sell the operating system and its affiliated catalog of systems programs after January 5, 2010. Then, in announcement letter 909-285 on November 10, 2009, Big Blue extended V5R4's withdrawal date to January 7, 2011. It is no doubt better to get some V5R4 licensing money and then subsequent Software Maintenance (SWMA) money from V5R4 shops that are still reluctant to move to i 6.1 or i 7.1 than to get nothing at all. Hence V5R4 is getting nearly six more months of marketing life. Now, V5R4 and its related systems programs are available for SWMA until May 27, 2011. I would not be at all surprised to see that date extended to the end of 2011 if the economy does not improve and if enough V5R4 shops squawk. The last thing IBM wants to do is have a third party come in and offer support for V5R4--although that would be an interesting possibility, of course.

If IBM had actually made some investments in virtualization and partitioning technology for the i platform, as it has done for AIX, then it may not have painted itself into this V5R4 corner. First of all, the idea that you have to do a program conversion at all violates one of the central tenets of the AS/400 platform, which ensures program compatibility from the System/36 and System/38 up through the AS/400. Yes, there were emulation modes and other caveats. But if IBM wants V5R4 shops to move to new hardware and software, then perhaps it should have had a V5R4 Emulation Environment in i 7.1 that would not require program conversion. Yes, this would no doubt have caused a performance hit, and perhaps a large one as was the case with the initial System/36 EE with the original OS/400 more than two decades ago. But as bad as that was, it was better than having to do program conversion at the same time as a hardware and software upgrade during a recession. (OK, to be fair, there was a recession in the late 1980s. So maybe the situation is not so different after all.)

All I know is that IBM is not cushioning the blow. It is not offering incentives specifically designed for i5/OS V5R4 shops, much less admitting that there is still a sizeable installed base of OS/400 V5R3 machinery out that that has fallen off maintenance and are, for all intents and purposes, the new System/36 base, freeze-dried and stuck in the past. IBM introduces this barrier, and expects customers to pay to jump it. But with AIX 7.1, IBM provides workload partitions that can run AIX 5.2 (not logical partitions, but the virtual private server-style of workload partitions). Big Blue is also supporting AIX 5.3 natively on Power7 iron--an operating system that came out in 2005 with the Power5-based machines. Using this same logic, OS/400 V5R2 should still be natively supported on Power7 machines.

And IBM wonders why i shops are annoyed?

IBM bought Transitive more than two years ago for its emulation software, which is the underpinning of the PowerVM Lx86 emulation environment that allows Linux applications that have been compiled for 32-bit X86 chips to run in emulated form on Power-based servers running Linux. The Transitive software could no doubt be used to run OS/400 V5R2, OS/400 V4R3, and i5/OS V5R4 applications and their databases in emulated form and atop a logical partition, helping customers to move ahead without having to do program conversion. If this idea has occurred to Big Blue, it hasn't said so. And if it did, someone would probably crab about having to spend money for testing and development.

When IBM helps make the transition to i 7.1 and Power7 iron easier both technically and economically, V5R3 and V5R4 shops will move ahead. And now is the time to do it. How many more customers can IBM afford to lose to Windows, Unix, and Linux?

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