Infographic for the Infor EMEA System i User Survey 2013. Infor’s EMEA System i Survey was carried out during March and April 2013 with over a thousand manager or higher decision-makers invited to participate and over a hundred responses collected.

1. The Infor EMEA System i User Survey 2013
Infor’s EMEA System i Survey 2013 was carried out during March and April 2013
with over a thousand manager or higher decision-makers invited to participate.*
System i still overwhelmingly
means value for money
When asked whether total cost of ownership of
their system compares well with alternatives, only
5.5% disagreed.
62.7%
31.8%
Agreed
5.5%
Neutral
Disagreed
Up-to-date IBM i is the
key to reliability
92.5%
agreed
Unsurprisingly, when asked whether their business system
is “very reliable”, not one of the respondents running their
mission-critical business systems on System i, disagreed.
92.5% agreed and the remaining 7.5% were “neutral”.
100%
System
i 7.1
Very Reliable
97%
System
i 5.4
Very Reliable
Scrutinising the 7.5% who remained neutral on reliability, all but one were on System i 5.4 or earlier,
the earliest version of the O/S still supported and slated for withdrawal of standard maintenance
in September 2013 – suggesting that it’s only those who may have fallen behind on updates and
maintenance who may be at a slight risk of reduced levels of reliability.
The first ever System i virus?
To our surprise, a sole respondent disagreed slightly
with the statement that they had never experienced a
virus on their System i platform. There is currently no
known virus which targets or infects System i, however
it is theoretically possible for an infected PC user, to
save an infected file to a System i file server.
Although harmless to the server, the file can potentially
be redistributed to another PC. Additionally, a virus
running on an infected PC can potentially damage files
on any network drive to which it has access.
?
Over-confidence in backups?
The clear picture is one of System i users having very
high confidence in their ability to recover 100% of
their data in the event of data loss.
12%
Neutral
86%
Confident
However this high degree of confidence contradicts
the anecdotal experience – that many companies
rarely test their backups and when it comes to a
restore they often find that the backup is faulty or
incomplete, that over-used tapes have begun to fail,
and supposedly off-site tapes somehow happen to not
be off-site at the moment a fire or flood strikes.
2%
Lack confidence
Declining skill base
When asked whether attracting and retaining
critical IT skills was becoming a problem, over
half of respondents agreed.
52%
26%
Neutral
22%
I
R PG
Agreed
Disagreed
Mystified about the cloud?
When asked whether cloud could help address
skills shortages on IBM i more than half of users
participating in the survey sat on the fence, suggesting
that System i users are unsure as to how the cloud
computing model could be applicable to them.
14%
Thought Cloud
could help
33%
53%
Thought Cloud
couldn’t help
Neutral
You’re Power™-Hungry
It was suggested to participants in the survey that
they were uncomfortable with the risk and cost
of operating old hardware. A small minority of
respondents disagreed with this statement and most
agreed they would indeed be more comfortable on
newer hardware. The figures were almost identical
for IBM i operating system software.
58%
Agreed
they are power hungry
23%
Neutral
19%
Disagreed
Green Screen
Some might find it surprising that for a platform
perceived widely to be green screen, only a quarter
of respondents said their users were to some degree
unhappy with its appearance or user interface. And
the vast majority of those experiencing issues were
running early versions of the operating system.
42%
31%
Happy
Neutral
System i is good for business
71%
Unhappy
to some degree
When asked whether users are able to access the
data they need to run the business, 71% agreed, with
the vast majority of the remainder giving a neutral
answer. Only 8% disagreed – proving that even a
mature business system, kept up to date, will often
continue to serve the business needs very well.
21%
Agreed
8%
Neutral
90% of users appear to
plan further investment
in the platform:
27%
Disagreed
When asked about four possible areas for investment:
Reporting and Analytics, Additional Functionality,
Going Mobile, and 24x7 High Availability, 90% of
respondents indicated at least one area was either a
need or a priority for investment.
Even of the 10% not planning any further development,
the vast majority believe that System i would support
their business needs for the next 10 years.
Reporting and Analytics
Additional Functionality
Going Mobile
24x7 High Availability
Infor would like to thank the participants in the EMEA System i Attitudes Survey for helping to raise €500 for
“Habitat for Humanity”, by their participation. Habitat for Humanity is an international, non-governmental, non-profit
organisation devoted to building ‘simple, decent and affordable’ housing for people in need.
* ue to a small minority of end-users maintaining old System i applications purely for archive purposes, and to
D
ensure the survey is representative of businesses running their mission-critical applications on System i, only
those still running their mission-critical applications on System i were included in the results.
To access the full survey report please visit:
www.inforsystemi.com/survey
©Copyright 2013. Infor. All rights reserved.