In the IBM i community, we face the perception that the platform is outmoded.

Corporate management explores going off-platform, and often decides to do so, usually in search of modern ERP, a category of application which once was a mainstay but is no longer well represented on IBM i.

I'm an exponent of "Let IBM i do what it does best". I see the future of the platform as a primarily a database-in-a-box, one more asset on the corporate intranet, a 24x7 lights-out platform that gathers data, processes data, and serves up data primarily via APIs and other secure mechanisms such as the enterprise event bus.

If your career is in IBM i but you are planning on either retiring or meekly embracing the off-platform initiative, you can go on doing what you have been doing, lo, these many years.

If you want to stay on the platform, prepare for the management initiative by being cloud -integration-ready:

• adopt stream files
• use modern editors
• learn open source languages
• develop APIs
• deploy API gateways
• serve up data to users via off-platform web services (hint: Power Linux LPAR) culling data from your APIs
• be ready serve up data via Camel + Kafka

When the bean counters begin to hover over your cubicle, be ready with the answers that will keep IBM i a secure, modern, energy-efficient component of the MIS mix.