One of the reasons customers are moving to IBM i 7.1 is to take advantage of DB2 enhancements. According to IBM, there were a lot of performance and optimization enhancements under the covers, and they are delivering significant enhancements if you put 6.1 vs. 7.1 on a POWER7 system. For customers on ERP solutions, that difference in performance can drive a lot of value.
Other 7.1 drivers include asynchronous support enhancements with POWERHA and increases in performance with POWER7 that opens up new options, like onboard reporting and analytic solutions like, but not limited to IBMM’s DB2 Web Query. IBM also states that any reporting and analytics solution for clients that in the past didn’t have the performance to drive their core business applications and analytics and reporting at the same time, can now have this capability in POWER7. People are taking a fresh look at the simplicity, ease, and affordability of DB2 Web Query and analytics right there on your i box and that’s a function of the scalability and performance that opens up the possibility for additional applications.
If you are a client on 5.4 and are contemplating a move to 6.1 or 7.1, IBM encourages you to go to 7.1. The biggest benefit is the features and functions and the enhancements that will continue to come to this release. The concept of technology refreshes is new with 7.1. which comes from customers telling IBM that they weren’t necessarily on a two year cycle of consuming new releases themselves, and what they wanted was to access to new features, functions, and capability without putting their business through a whole new release upgrade cycle. 7.1 with “technology refreshes” allows IBM to deliver base functionality in between major releases, so a major release does not occur every two years.
