Fledgling pressure group iManifest EMEA has launched a new website as it seeks to get more industry players on board.

Martin Fincham, EMEA general manager of LANSA, started the group in July in response to the actions of the original iManifest organisation in Japan, a coalition of 71 i-centric vendors who are bypassing IBM to fly the flag for the i independently.

To kick-start an EMEA version, LANSA stumped up cash to go towards an advertisement in the pan-European edition of the Financial Times. The ad will declare the group's intentions to boost the Power i platform, mirroring a similar initiative by Japan's iManifest in the Nikkei business newspaper in January. So far, the iManifest EMEA collection pot stands at over €11,000, a board is being established and the new site was spawned from an increasingly active presence on LinkedIn.

The aim is to change perceptions about the i's fitness for purpose and vitality. Fincham points out that there are plenty of IT firms who play on fears, uncertainties and doubts about the i being a legacy platform. This, he says, is perfectly understandable in a competitive market but it is unfair and untrue criticism.

"So let’s get the facts out there," he says. "We’ve got to fight back. Companies out there spend millions, sometimes billions, of dollars a year creating a brand with a goal of influencing buying behaviour. And it’s a competitive market, it’s a maturing market, buyers are becoming more savvy, so I don’t think there’s any IT product in the world today that’s going to be successful without at least someone, usually its parent, handling its marketing and PR. Nothing is so good that it sells itself any more. So the IBM i is going to struggle to be successful, it’s going to struggle to win new customers, it’s going to struggle to keep its foothold in the install base unless somebody is extolling its virtues – and it’s not IBM Corporate Marketing."

Not that Fincham particularly blames IBM. Indeed, he says he can see why it has moved beyond platform-centric marketing to wider messages such as Smarter Planet and so on. It's not just i people who feel neglected.

"Go speak to a Lotus fanatic and see whether the money’s going into the Lotus brand to compete with Microsoft Office," he says. And if IBM is not exactly busting a gut to champion the Power i, then it is up to another entity.

Fincham says: "There are only three players in this. There’s the vendor, there’s the customer and there’s other businesses in between who do actually make their livelihood off the back of these customers. And it has to be a commercial entity, there is investment required, there are resources required; we can’t expect the customers to sell to themselves."

If all goes according to plan, we should see the first concrete results of the iManifest EMEA initiative around January 2010. The Japanese pioneers took nine months to form a group of 71 resellers, ISVs, distributors and trade publishers. iManifest EMEA aims to do the same in six months, albeit from a much larger catchment area. 50 participants would be enough to get the ball rolling and Fincham has come up with a neat membership model based on a passenger aircraft with seats allocated to economy, premium-economy and business-class depending on the level of cash a member is willing to spend.

Apart from LANSA, firms like Raz-Lee Security, SAMAC, SystemObjects and Systsoft Systems & Software have already signed up. Fincham is now in discussions with i-players across the board including, it would seem, supportive souls within IBM itself. One hurdle the group faces, however, is that the consequences of its actions will be hard to measure.

Fincham says: "This is part of the challenge of getting other people to buy-in because there’s a tendency, particularly for other vendors, to ask me questions that belie the fact that they’re thinking about ROI, they’re thinking about a business case for the expenditure and I have to stop them and say, 'No, if that’s the only way you can participate, then don’t'."

The contribution iManifest is asking of its members is actually fairly small, says Fincham. Countering suggestions that it may seem strange for such a group to have to exist at all, it is clear that he thinks that it is a price worth paying. Java, he points out, has a very healthy, quasi-independent life outside the aegis of its owner Sun Microsystems.

"I don’t think that in the year 2009 the idea of a community-led business model should be considered odd. I actually think it’s rather cutting edge," he says dryly.

Fincham does not fit the stereotype of the AS/400 diehard spouting S/36 anecdotes and other tales of yore. He has been in the Power i industry for just five years and it is worth noting that LANSA itself is increasingly a cross-platform player. However, his conviction that iManifest EMEA, its Japanese inspiration and a rumoured but as yet undeclared American version have a worthy cause is clear.

"I don’t actually believe that for the target, ideal customer profile of an IBM i buyer today -- someone whose data processing needs are more sophisticated than is easily met by a Wintel configuration and does not require the raw power of a mainframe -- there is actually a mid-market alternative to the IBM i that stacks up like-for-like."

"Even if there was, when you look at the cost of change and how you actually build a business case for change, the alternative would need to be ten times better or ten times faster, not for the IT guys to get excited about, but for a CFO to sign-off on it. So until I see a viable alternative to the i, I have absolute conviction in the future of the platform and even when it does arrive, if it isn’t at least ten times better or ten times cheaper, I still think people will stay with what they’ve got because it’s a bloody good machine."