The future is maybe not so clear anymore... Or is it?

Again, I know I am swimming against the current. But you know, who swims with it?

Remember how easy things were in the past. In the 1980's the saying was "Nobody Gets Fired For Buying IBM", in the late 1990's and 2000's it was "Nobody Gets Fired For Buying Microsoft" and today it is "Nobody Gets Fired For Buying anything in the cloud".

The word legacy system has for a long period of time been related to IBM Mainframe with their Cobol applications and the last 10 - 20 years the same thing for IBM i with their RPG applications. Today it is as much old .NET and Java-applications that has to be taken care of. You've heard the other saying "Java is the new Cobol" which is related to the billions of lines of code that is out there. Often programmed in a old fashion way and almost always poorly or not documented at all.

So how about today, what are my long term options... Well, JAVA has it's issues for sure. Just google "Future of java" and read all the concerns many has about it.

"My recommendation for the new JDKS, just try to upgrade and check what breaks",

Some people are not willing to have this approach and like the idea that the code written in 2020 will run in 2030 as well.

.NET then? Oh, yes there are some concerns about that of course as well. This is just one example after googling "the future of .net"

Of course you want to know the future of .NET and if your applications will be supported..

A beg you to compare this to the support of IBM i (and therefore your RPG applications) below..

It gets more complicated when you adding the cloud options as well. To just host your application server in the cloud is one thing, but the world is nowadays talking about "Cloud Native".

"Cloud native is a term used to describe container-based environments. Cloud-native technologies are used to develop applications built with services packaged in containers, deployed as microservices and managed on elastic infrastructure through agile DevOps processes and continuous delivery workflows."

Cloud native landscape of 2020.

I am happy that I am not an architect of any kind that need to decide which combination to choose for the future of my company. Also remember, this is how it looks like in 2020, it will not look the same in 2021 or 2022 or 2030... Will your vendor even be around in 5 years from now?

And by the way...

But I am here to give you hope! If you choose RPG on IBM i with the integrated Db2 relational database for your backend applications and pick a few options from the open source world (runs on IBM i as well) on top for good looking user interfaces etc. You can trust that your application will run on your server in 15 years from now. Probably without doing any changes to it at all. This is something I can promise as IBM i runs applications from the 1970s all around the world today...

So, now go back to the Cloud Native landscape picture and spend some time looking at the details in it. It's a bit like watching the ocean, lookin into the fire or up into the sky...