There are three cool new i-related developments happening this year, and that word, happening, is particularly key because these developments are just in the stages of infancy: IBM's Smart Market offerings that run on IBM i; the iManifest initiative in Japan; and looksoftware's ilook. If they will grow into something larger and influential remains to be seen, but for now, they're certainly powerful enough to make you go hmm.

IBM's Smart Market

IBM first launched its Smart Market effort in India, and just this summer IBM brought it to the United States. Basically, the program attempts to make it easy for small businesses to buy appliance-like IBM Smart Cubes that run IBM i or Linux and various pre-packaged applications.

Sounds awesome, right? Sort of. IBM isn't trying to sell small business customers with the technology; the company is focusing on the solutions. To find the OS that runs on the Smart Cube box, you really have to be paying attention--or you have to look for it on purpose. Since most small business customers probably aren't looking at the OS first, this is a smart play. In fact, it harkens back to the days of the AS/400 where applications led many customers to the platform. How about a modern-day success story of a similar strategy? Apple's iPhone ecosystem. Apple is loath to point out which processor runs its iPhone, iPhone 3G, and new iPhone 3G S. How do we know what processors is uses? Various enthusiasts sacrificed a unit by tearing it apart and peering inside. And now, the 50,000 applications that are available for the iPhone are what Apple tends to lead with as it markets the iPhone.

Back to Smart Market. IBM has an online application store, too, and the idea is to invite small business customers to find what they need and buy it, along with a broader Smart Market premise: while Apple app store customers are pretty much on their own with the iPhones and apps, IBM's Smart Market customers are taken care of. IBM starts by doing all the preinstallation and configuration work, as well as providing optional support levels like backup and recovery services.

There are dozens of solutions available on IBM's Smart Market site, such as Intuit's QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions financial management software, but it's important to note that some solutions run only on Linux (like QuickBooks) and some run only on IBM i. So far, for IBM i, there are several focused industry solutions from RJS Software Systems, like Document Management for Healthcare or for Manufacturing, a VoIP solution from Nortel, and backup/recovery offerings from Vision Solutions.

Obviously application growth is key here, and Zend Technologies, Inc., and IBM are working on bringing Zend's PHP solution to IBM's Smart Market offerings, which in turn will let PHP-based applications run on the Smart Cubes very easily. This is the sort of application momentum that IBM needs to turn Smart Market into something compelling.

The hardware is based on POWER6 processors, and they don't have the reach compared to your typical IBM Power System because they are designed for small businesses.

Small businesses also need support and help desks, so IBM is covering that, too. IBM's services have a Smart Desk, which is a Web-enabled dashboard that clients use for maintenance issues. Customers can update applications automatically (again, much like the ease in which Apple App Store iPhone customers update their apps), but they can also beef up their services through add-on subscriptions for things like cloud-based services for managed security or hosted back-up and recovery.

When something really goes wrong, IBM has an IBM Smart Business Support team that's primed and ready to help with hardware and software defects, but the team can also accept product or support improvement ideas.

So, the hmm . . . small businesses sometimes grow up into large businesses, and if a small business chooses an app that runs on IBM i, then IBM i increases its install base and becomes more important to IBM and the customer. Will a thriving new ecosystem for i-based applications develop? Will IBM pour more investment into making IBM i easier to manage? Will IBM realize that it's cheaper to support IBM i-based Smart Cubes vs. Linux-based Smart Cubes . . . and promote those cubes more in order to retain a higher profit margin?

All-in-all, IBM's Smart Market effort shows some early promise.

The Rise of the iManifest

The complaint that IBM has shifted away from marketing the IBM i (and System i/iSeries) has been rising for years, but the Japanese are doing a lot more than simply complaining: a group of 71 IBM Business Partners and ISVs have banded together to create a marketing initiative and i-focused community to promote the greatest computer system on the planet.

The initiative has three basic goals:

• to revitalize the IBM i market in Japan and increase the customer installed base
• to assure IBM i customer organizations, resellers and ISVs selling IBM i solutions that IBM i will not only survive, but more importantly, continue to prosper
• to inform the wider IT community of the unique value proposition of IBM i

In addition, the group created a joint declaration, the "IBM i Manifest", that describes their faith and investment in the IBM i platform. To put their money where their mouth is, so to speak, they reportedly published a full page ad in the Nikkei newspaper, which would have cost somewhere around $100,000 in U.S. dollars. Doing the math, that's only about $1,400 per partner, which is chump change for most businesses that are dedicated to selling IBM i solutions.

There's power in numbers, it turns out.

Now, if the iManifest and the efforts of the group can generate some real customer-focused awareness and sales momentum, the IBM i ecosystem could really benefit. Basically, if IBM won't focus on selling a superior technology, can integrators, consultants, and ISVs do it alone?

Maybe. How much marketing muscle could North American or European i-focused sellers flex? Could a similar band of like-minded IBM BPs show IBM how to successfully push technology over services?

The Japanese businesses have opened up a very interesting door.

looksoftware's IBM i OS GUIizer

In one of the potentially biggest moves this year, looksoftware has been working to deliver a free solution call ilook that will use rules to turn IBM i OS 5250 screens into a robust and easy-to-use GUI. And one more time for clarity: ilook is free.

Basically--and this really isn't news to anyone--IBM has gotten consistent criticism over its lack of a native GUI interface for IBM i OS, a.k.a. i5/OS, a.k.a. OS/400. Just looking at all the 5250 screens screams "old school" . . . and not in a good way. At the same time--and even though third-party options abound for avoiding green screens--a good many IBM i-focused organizations have had a hard time figuring out how they should move forward with their modernization efforts. In some ways, they've been stuck.

First announced at COMMON in Reno, by the time you read this, looksoftware should be finishing up ilook.

The implementation will retain all the same functionality of IBM i OS via 5250 screens, of course, and because the different versions of IBM i are remarkably consistent, looksoftware can build ilook on a rules-based process that covers nearly every screen you need in IBM i OS--but looksoftware has been careful not to promise 100 percent coverage yet (hey, it's a lot of screens with some possibly esoteric uses out there).

The ilook solution is based on looksoftware's smartclient technology, and more specifically, ilook provides a cloud deployed plug-in that provides a rich user experience (UX) for IBM i OS and integrates tightly with the desktop and IBM's online reference library.

The initial release of ilook will be dependent on Microsoft ActiveX and Windows--which is widely used--but looksoftware says it plans to follow up with additional supported platforms based on customer demands in the future.

If ilook is widely adopted, it has the potential to become a user-generated "standard" GUI for IBM i, and it may help shield potential new IBM customers from their own green-screen biases. Will ilook be met with widespread excitement and use? Will it help change industry perceptions? Can it make it easier for newbies to interact with IBM i?

Lots of Potential

IBM's Smart Market, the iManifest effort in Japan, and ilook are all very interesting developments on their own . . . but what if they all became successful all on their own? Might they combine to become a catalyst for further IBM i sales, development, and adoption? All of it taken together is definitely worth a moment of . . . hmm.

Chris Maxcer (chris.maxcer@penton.com) is news editor for System iNEWS magazine. "I think all three of these initiatives are particularly interesting," he says. "They all hinge on core strengths of IBM i, and yet, all three have months ahead of them before their impact can be felt or even measured. Will they change our world or fade from memory? We'll see!"