COMMON Europe notes ensuring complete high availability and keeping staff skills current rank second and third.

COMMON Europe (CE) conducted its sixth annual Top Concerns Survey last May and June with global multilingual participation. It obtained 524 participations from Europe, Americas, Africa, Australasia, consisting of customers, IBM BPs/ISVs and IBM. The Top Concerns Survey enables COMMON Europe to understand global i community priorities to influence IBM and its Business Partners as well as to share them amongst worldwide Power i users.

This 2011 survey showed that "satisfy internal customers" is for the third year in a row top priority for survey participants, the worldwide users of IBM i on Power Systems, System i, or the AS/400. “Ensure complete high availability" rose from last year’s fifth to the second place in 2011 and "keep the skills current for the existing staff” had almost the same score. They are followed by “receive consistent high quality vendor support” and “modernize applications.”

“Aggressive marketing of IBM i by IBM" came in at sixth position although the whole i community cites it as a real concern. Cloud computing is still in its nascent stage for the i community as "software licensing or hardware investments as a service" were voted last two in a list of 15.

Responses to Current Issues

We should be cautious in interpreting these numbers as web voters or CEC participants are often active users and early adopters of technology. However, we see a general trend of budget improvement compared to 2010. The migration numbers are also impressive as more than half are already on IBM i6.1 and almost one third are on IBM i7.1 and POWER7 processors.

Although "Aggressive marketing for the IBM I" was in the list of "concerns" and was voted 6^th, it was still the most cited golden concern. Next in line golden or unlisted concerns relate to "Continuity of i", "Pricing", "Application modernization" and "Skills".

Ian Jarman, Manager of IBM Power systems software, the opening keynote speaker, drew random names of participants for three iPods for the COMMON Europe Congress opening session participants. The four other iPods for web voters, one each for Africa, The Americas, Australasia and Europe are also drawn by an innocent hand and will be shipped soon. Congratulations to the winners Danie Coetzee from Africa, Todd Nashville from The Americas, Srinivas Sanaka from Australasia and Herbert Czerwonka from Europe.

The full Top Concerns 2011 preliminary results are below. They are also available on COMMON Europe web site www.comeur.org. These surveys are global and multilingual in order to reach IBM i on Power Systems, System i and AS/400 community worldwide. Participants rated 15 Top Concerns on a scale of 1 to 10, added their own Golden Concern(s) and replied to current budget and migrations issues.

COMMON Europe Congress 2012

COMMON Europe will celebrate its 50th year in 2012 with a Golden Jubilee congress from 9 to 12 June 2012 in the beautiful Waltz capital of the world, Vienna, Austria. Please already save the date of this promising once in 50 years event for rich education from world renowned IBM and industry experts and great networking opportunities.

About Top Concerns Survey

The Top Concerns Survey is a strategic feature of COMMON Europe. For previous results, please visit www.comeur.org or contact Ranga Deshpande, Project Leader, at ranga@comeur.org.