IBM i 7.2 is Ready, But is the Vendor Community Ready?

#preferred IBM i graphicIBM released version 7.2 of the IBM i operating system on Friday, May 2nd, and the new OS is one of the major topics here at the 2014 COMMON annual Meeting and Exposition in Orlando, Florida.

And while IBM and their business partners are touting i 7.2’s benefits, there wasn’t a lot of talk about whether IBM i third-party vendors were ready and able to run their software on the new OS: a key prerequisite for any operating system upgrade.

So I took an informal poll  of 26 different IBM i third-party vendors at the COMMON vendor exposition today and asked each of them one simple question: will your software run under IBM i 7.2 today?

The vendors split 50/50 on whether their software is ready for i 7.2.

Exactly 13 of the 26 vendors surveyed said their software was ready to run on i 7.2 today. The other 13 said that they weren’t ready or hadn’t finished testing the software on 7.2, but they were working on it or ready to work on it.

The point is that while IBM is ready for IBM i shops to upgrade to 7.2, third-party vendors are still finalizing whether the software many shops use to process their business is ready for the new OS. This doesn’t mean their software won’t be ready soon, it just means that it will take a little more time for them to check and certify there aren’t any problems with their packages running on 7.2.

If you’re thinking about upgrading to i 7.1, be sure to contact all of your third-party vendors to make sure their software is ready to run on the new OS. This should be a standard part of any OS operating system upgrade process. Because if your vendor software isn’t ready to run on 7.2, you probably should wait until the vendor certifies it’s ready.

 

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About Joe Hertvik

Joe is the owner of Hertvik Business Services, a service company providing written white papers, case studies, and other marketing content to computer industry companies. He is also a contributing editor for IT Jungle and has written the Admin Alert column for the past ten years. Follow Joe Hertvik on Twitter @JoeHertvik. Email Joe for a free quote on white papers, case studies, brochures, or other marketing materials.
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