FAX/400 And CICS For i Are Dead. What Will IBM Kill Next?
May 19, 2025 Alex Woodie
A number of IBM i products and functions were sunsetted and are no longer supported with IBM i 7.6, including some of the greenscreen Application Development ToolSet (ADTS) tools like Screen Design Aid (SDA) and Report Layout Utility (RLU), and more than two dozen others. This shouldn’t come as news, as IBM previously announced its intent. But what products and functions will IBM kill with the next release of IBM i? A cryptic post by IBM on its website has the community talking.
As part of the May 2024 Technology Refresh (TR) cycle for IBM i 7.4 and 7.5, Big Blue informed the IBM i community what functions and products it would no longer support with the next major release. The company issued a “software withdrawal and discontinuance” notice that stated it would end support for a nearly 30 products.
The impact of that May 2024 announcement is that all of those products – such as the various ADTS products like SDA, RLU, File Compare and Merge Utility (FCMU), Data File Utility (DFU), as well as Management Central, the DNS Server, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), Merlin 1.0, Rational Developer for i (RDi) version 9.6, and many others – are no longer supported on IBM i 7.6. IBM officially ended support for those products on April 30, 2025, as it explained in its April 8, 2005, IBM Support letter, titled Planning to upgrade to IBM i 7.6 (Software).
Most of the products that IBM killed are very old. They were created decades ago and have few users. The one exception may be ADTS, which continues to be, by far, the most popular tools for developing applications on the IBM i. This is backed by years of Fortra’s IBM i Marketplace surveys, which find 75 percent to 80 percent of IBM i customers use ADTS for application development, compared to about half who use RDi or VS Code (many developers use multiple tools).
IBM has created a placeholder for the products it intends to cease supporting with the next release after IBM i 7.6.
Now IBM is going through the same function and production rationalization exercise for the next release of IBM i. As part of the IBM i 7.6 TR cycle, the company published a page on the IBM Support website describing the tools that will cease to be supported with the next major release of IBM i following IBM i.
On the Upgrade Planning – Future software releases portion of its website, IBM states “IBM i 7.6 will be the last release that will deliver the following functions from the IBM i portfolio,” and shows a form with the IBM i function, product number, and replacement function.
The only problem is, the form is empty.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet, lads . . .” quipped IBM i admin Rob Berendt on the MIDRANGE-L discussion board.
While IBM hasn’t said what products it will kill, there has been plenty of speculation that wants to move on from legacy development tools. Specifically, Source Entry Utility (SEU) and Programming Development Manager (PDM), which arguably are the two most popular components of ADTS, have been rumored to be on the chopping block.
Back in 2023, IBMers Liam Allan, who heads development of the IBM i plug-in for VS Code, and Jesse Gorzinski, who was then the IBM business architect for open source, led public discussions on whether it was time to sunset SEU, which hasn’t been updated since the release of IBM i 6.1 back in 2008. While the response was mixed, the majority of IBM i professionals rejected the idea of eliminating support for SEU at that time.
The arguments for and against keeping SEU around as a supported product are fairly clear. Those who want to see IBM end support for SEU argue that the legacy greenscreen tool is keeping IBM i developers from creating modern IBM i applications and using modern development methods and tooling. Those who want to see IBM keep SEU around argue that it’s an indispensable tool that is fast and easy to use, and that killing it would hamstring their ability to maintain legacy codebases.
Fortra 2025 IBM i Marketplace Survey
The backward computability of the IBM i platform is legendary in the IT business, perhaps only equaled by the System Z mainframe. The capability to run code developed decades ago – and to run it fast and efficiently on modern processors – has been a major factor in the IBM i platform’s success and longevity.
For instance, the shift from 48-bit CISC processors to 64-bit RISC hardware with OS/400 V3R6 in 1995 made with little disruption to customers’ businesses, and is a testament to the wisdom and foresight of the AS/400’s Technology Independent Machine Interface (TIMI). The last disruptive upgrade was the move to IBM i 6.1 in 2008, which required customers to recompile their applications. It’s been 17 years since that big Power rebrand and 6.1 recompile. Are we on the cusp of another big shift?
Ultimately, it will be IBM’s decision whether it wants to cut its link to the past and force customers into the present, or whether it will continue providing nearly unlimited backward compatibility. Like with many decisions it makes about the future of the platform, IBM seeks and accepts input and feedback from the IBM i community, whether it’s through formal means like the IBM Ideas portal, the LUG, the COMMON Americas Advisory Council (CAAC), and the Common Europe Advisory Council (CEAC), or informal avenues like columns in The Four Hundred and letters to the editor.
The topic of whether it’s time to put SEU out to pasture undoubtedly will come up at this week’s COMMON POWERUp 2025 conference in Anaheim, California. It’s a discussion that is worth having, and worth having in the open, so nobody is caught by surprise when the decision ultimately is made.
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