Re: Staying current on releases? (was: Are there any System i sites on the Internet that offer accounts?)

[Scott Klement <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Based on the survey we did for System iNetwork (which is NOT a 
scientific survey by any means -- and was conducted in Spring of 2007) 
here's the breakdown of releases that people expected to be using by the 
end of 2007:

V5R4  60%
V5R3  34%
V5R2   4%
V5R1   1%
older  1%

You have to remember, of course, that the folks who read System iNetwork 
 publications (and therefore would've responded to this survey) tend to 
be IT personnel that want to keep learning new techniques and keep up to 
date on what's happening in the industry, so these numbers are certainly 
not accurate.  Shops that don't have an IT staff are probably more 
likely to be on an older release, and would not have responded to our 
survey.

In reality, I would guess that the number of shops at V5R3 and higher is 
more like 65%.  Still very high, and still a majority.  But 35% of the 
marketplace is too large to ignore.

Of course, you could argue that the folks that fall into that 35% aren't 
very likely to want/need your services, since they're probably more 
interested in maintaining the status quo than they are in moving forward.

Lukas Beeler wrote:
> Are there many people that run something below V5R3? V5R3 is currently
> the lowest release supported.
>
> Do you really think that the people running unsupported i5/OS versions
> are the majority of System i users?