Doug joined IBM in 1974. In 1996 he became part of the group that brought the IBM Network Station to market. Two years later, he returned to the AS/400 Division as the worldwide Segment Manager for Application Development Tools and Middleware where the Tools Network was created. At that time he met GeneXus and ARTech. Last year, he joined the iSeries brand marketing team as World Wide Sales Executive for e-business Infrastructure.

Fulmer participated in the XIII GeneXus International Meeting and granted the following interview for GeneXus News. 

Would you please describe the iSeries market?

The iSeries market is about 20% of what we call large customers, and 80% of what we call small and medium businesses (SMB). But the 20% that are very large customers are very complex, heterogeneous, with all kind of systems. They are the kind of customers that are pushing technology right to its limits. The 80% of SMB is typically not a very technical customer. They are looking for solutions for a business problem and couldn't care less what physical piece of hardware all runs on, as long as it satisfies their needs and doesn't cost them a lot.

The iSeries typical market has grown very steadily since the early seventies, when the production of these products begins. iSeries in particular tends to earn about 20,000 customers each year, new customers, so its still a growing market place for iSeries, and it still is a growing market place for Windows customers as well. Windows, and Unix, and some of the other systems like iSeries tend to be locked in a very competitive environment, in the middle of the SMB marketplace on which everyone is focused. But I'm sure that iSeries is doing very well.

And what are your plans for iSeries?

Our plans are reflected very actively in what we announced in January, a system for less than US$10,000 for the small customer all the way through to large systems for the enterprise customers. So, our plan continues to be to try to address the needs across the whole spectrum of computers, so they can grow from littlest to biggest without ever changing anything. It is also part of our plans to keep the total cost of ownership down, so they don't feel like it costs millions of dollars to own an iSeries. And for the last ten years in all the independent studies that have been done, the iSeries has the lowest cost of ownership than any system in the world.

The other part of our strategy -which is unique all over the world- is what we call server and application consolidation: instead of having more and more servers as in the Windows and Unix models, where you just need more and more systems and even more people to take care of them. Our plan is to consolidate them into a single footprint. So for instance, on an iSeries system today you can run Windows applications, Unix applications, you can run WebSphere, Domino, RPG, Cobol, and C, all in a single platform, in a single backup and recovery strategy, and a single operations interface.

One of the things we see, is that when customers end up with multiple physical platforms, a lot of them have a person in charge of Linux, a person in charge of Windows, and a person in charge of the iSeries, and very often they don't talk, they don't like each other, they compete for headcount, they compete for resources for their budgets. We compete for all that kind of stuff, instead of focusing together on solving the business problems, which is what we should be doing. So in our opinion, our cost of ownership is that if you can run those Windows, Unix, RPG and Cobol applications in a single physical system then we spend less time arguing over who gets more money for our budget in which area, and more time arguing how to solve the problems of the business. So, that step is a big thrust for us trying to put all the applications in a single platform to share hardware in order to share a whole farm of PC's.

Most applications running iSeries are RPG. How are you planning to migrate your customers to the Web?

There are several different strategies within IBM. One of them is using Java, using J2EE and trying to open computing standards and that kind of stuff. I don't think that's going to happen because we have 400,000 customers out there, most of them with RPG programs, and they won't do it by writing.

So the more realistic strategy is that they will take those existing applications as core applications and just leave them alone, and then add new Web functionality around them as to have e-business, and they can do it with Java, or with other graphical tools, and integrate it with those RPG applications. A lot of our customers are doing what we call re-facing (i.e. screen scraping technology) of applications, with existing RPG or Cobol applications, and there are tools for doing that. There's new workload like Business Intelligence, like Customer Resource Management, and Supply Chain that they can plug in to that existing RPG or Cobol applications, and those can help them because those are the kind of applications that you would deploy to the Internet, you wouldn't typically deploy payroll or accounts payable to the Internet.

The real challenge for us and for our partners like GeneXus is how to take those existing applications and integrate other functions into them with graphical presentation, so they conserve the main functions that the customer needs to deploy to the Internet, without wasting all the time spent developing the logic for the back end.

When was the first time you heard about GeneXus?

First time I heard about GeneXus was in 1996 when I was running a program for iSeries tools network and I met Dane Drotts at Common. Then IBM invited GeneXus to join the tools network, because it is a great tool to allow the kind of things that go on with our strategy, it goes on with the needs of our customers in terms of other challenges; for example, they don't have a big technical staff to build applications. They can use a tool like GeneXus to help them build all those applications.

What is your opinion about GeneXus?

I think ARTech has one of the best 4GL tools for the generation on the iSeries platform in the marketplace today. There are a few partners that can really play at the level that GeneXus can play. Today you have a very large installed base, an exceptional user community, a great technology, and a worldwide presence. Last night we met the people from China, and in addition to Europe, Latin America, North America, you have all the qualities we really love to see in a partner: worldwide presence and good products.

You are moving in the same direction that we are, which is moving to Java, and to open standard based computing. Open really isn't about Windows, open is about building an application that can run on any platform: Unix, Windows or iSeries platform, and with the kind of tools you have customers can do that kind of things.

You also have very good back end database connectivity, probably the best of the 4GL in terms of the back end database connectivity, so for customers, you give them a total freedom of choice.