We Need Your Help Gathering Some Intelligence
February 10, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan
In the absence of good information about the customer based out of Big Blue, a number of prominent companies in the vendor community have stepped up to support surveys of the IBM i customer base that give us a sense of what is going on in the base. We have an enlightened self-interest – several of them, in fact – in seeing a large number of participants from across the IBM i base – customers large and small, across many countries, with all make, model, and vintage of machines – take part in such surveys. No question about it.
And here we are asking you, once again, to take another survey because it is very important.
In this case, Fresche Solutions, the provider of application development and modernization tools for the IBM i platform, is working with COMMON, the user group that is mostly focused on IBM i shops, to gather up intelligence from IBM i shops. You can take the IBM i In Business survey at this link right here, and we are asking you to please do that. The more answers we have to more questions, the more will we will all know.
In this case, the survey has plenty of multiple choice questions, but about half of the questions have write in response boxes that will take a little bit more time but which will provide invaluable insight into what IBM i customers are up to. This survey from Fresche and COMMON is concerned with how IBM i companies develop their IT strategies and how they budget – or do not or cannot – to meet the goals of those strategies. So it is a little bit different from some of the other studies out there, which track what level of IBM i systems customers are using, how many programmers and administrators they have, what their concerns are, and what, generally speaking, their plans are for increasing or decreasing investments in the platform. The data that Fresche and COMMON gather also includes top concerns, as you might expect, because both organizations want to know how different possible initiatives stack up against each other.
As Fresche and COMMON put it, taking the survey will give a critical understanding of the role that the IT department plays in business, and how IBM i fulfills its part in the IT organization. As a thank you for giving the insight, the two are going to give participants a copy of the report based on the survey results and an invitation to a live session (presumably a webinar) this spring going over the results. To thank participants for their time, the two are offering an IBM i Innovation Package that includes Watson training and COMMON membership benefits.
So, once again, please take the survey and help us all get a better understanding.
