The 2025 IBMi Marketplace Survey, conducted by Fortra (formerly HelpSystems), continues to serve as a critical benchmark for businesses relying on IBM i (formerly AS400) systems. With participation from hundreds of IBM i professionals worldwide, this annual survey reveals evolving trends, strategic concerns, and technological directions for organizations across industries. As legacy systems evolve under mounting pressure for modernization, the 2025 survey reveals a clear theme—businesses must adapt or risk falling behind.
In this blog, we explore the top 10 key findings from the 2025 IBMi Marketplace Survey and analyze how AS400/IBMi modernization services can directly address these insights, ensuring businesses remain competitive and future-ready.
1. Modernization Is the Top Priority for 2025
The most significant takeaway from the 2025 survey is the increased focus on modernization. A whopping 78% of IBM i users reported modernization as their top IT priority, up from 65% in 2024. Organizations are feeling the pressure to update outdated interfaces, migrate from monolithic code, and transition to open-source-friendly environments.
How Modernization Services Help:
Modernization partners can help businesses refactor RPG or COBOL-based applications into modern languages like Java, Node.js, or Python, often with minimal disruption to business operations. Service providers offer a phased modernization approach, starting with GUI enhancement, API enablement, and progressive system re-architecture.
2. Security Is a Growing Concern
Cybersecurity was cited by 62% of respondents as a critical challenge. Many IBM i shops are struggling with unpatched vulnerabilities, insufficient access controls, and legacy security practices that don’t align with modern threat landscapes.
How Modernization Services Help:
Modernization is not just about aesthetics—it’s about security hardening. Modernization providers integrate role-based access controls (RBAC), SIEM solutions, multi-factor authentication, and real-time monitoring, aligning with NIST and GDPR standards. These practices help mitigate threats and reduce compliance risks.
3. Skills Shortage Continues to Worsen
The aging IBM i workforce remains a top concern. In 2025, 54% of organizations reported difficulty in finding RPG or COBOL developers. This has led to increased IT costs and slower project delivery.
How Modernization Services Help:
By transforming green-screen RPG programs into web-based applications and adopting modern frameworks like Angular or React for the frontend, businesses can onboard younger developers more easily. Modernization services also enable integration with DevOps practices, making the system appealing to today’s IT talent.
4. Hybrid Cloud Adoption Is on the Rise
Cloud computing continues to rise, with 41% of IBM i users either running workloads on the cloud or planning migration within the year. Businesses are embracing hybrid models—on-premise and cloud environments coexisting—for cost savings, flexibility, and scalability.
How Modernization Services Help:
Modernization teams help organizations re-architect applications for cloud readiness. This includes converting databases to SQL, containerizing applications using Docker, and deploying systems on AWS, Azure, or IBM Cloud. These services facilitate hybrid deployment models and ensure applications are cloud-compatible.
5. Open-Source Adoption Accelerates
Another major finding: 60% of IBM i shops are actively using or planning to use open-source tools like Node.js, Python, Git, or Jenkins. This shows a strong shift toward DevOps, automation, and continuous delivery models.
How Modernization Services Help:
Modernization providers assist in open-source enablement, from configuring GitHub repositories to integrating Jenkins for CI/CD pipelines. They also train teams in Agile methodologies and microservices architecture, ensuring long-term agility and cost-efficiency.
6. Business Intelligence and Data Analytics Are in Demand
According to the survey, 47% of organizations stated a lack of actionable insights from IBM i data. Many businesses rely on outdated reporting tools that can’t deliver real-time dashboards or advanced analytics.
How Modernization Services Help:
Modernization service providers extract data from DB2 and integrate it with modern analytics platforms like Power BI, Tableau, or Apache Superset. Through data pipelines and ETL processes, legacy systems are transformed into intelligence-driven ecosystems, offering real-time KPIs, predictive analytics, and visualization tools.
7. API Integration Is Essential
As more companies rely on SaaS and mobile platforms, API integration has become a necessity. Around 44% of respondents in the 2025 survey reported API creation and management as a key priority.
How Modernization Services Help:
Modernization providers help businesses build RESTful APIs using tools like IBM i Web Services, Apache Camel, or LoopBack. These APIs expose core business logic for secure use by web apps, mobile devices, and third-party tools. As a result, legacy apps can seamlessly interact with modern ecosystems like Salesforce, SAP, or Shopify.
8. Green-Screen Interfaces Are a Bottleneck
Despite their robustness, green-screen interfaces have become a liability. Over 66% of respondents indicated that these outdated UIs hinder user productivity and increase training costs.
How Modernization Services Help:
Modernization experts use tools like Profound UI, LANSA, and NodeRun to build web-based GUIs for IBM i applications. They retain backend logic while offering responsive, user-friendly interfaces compatible with tablets and mobile devices. This improves UX, boosts employee satisfaction, and reduces onboarding time.
9. Cost Reduction Drives Strategic IT Decisions
Cost savings remain a core priority. Businesses seek modernization not just for innovation but for efficiency and long-term ROI. In 2025, 51% of IBM i users reported that modernization efforts helped reduce operational costs by 20–35%.
How Modernization Services Help:
Modernization leads to infrastructure consolidation, cloud migration, reduction of license fees, and automation of manual workflows. Businesses can replace expensive proprietary software with open-source equivalents. Automation in testing, deployment, and monitoring further drives down IT overheads.
10. IBM i Remains a Strategic Platform
The most encouraging insight from the survey? 91% of respondents see IBM i as a strategic platform for the future. The system is known for unmatched reliability, security, and performance. The consensus: modernize IBM i, not replace it.
How Modernization Services Help:
Service providers offer incremental modernization, preserving the core reliability of IBM i while wrapping it in modern APIs, cloud infrastructure, web UIs, and data layers. This hybrid approach ensures organizations retain stability and compliance, while gaining flexibility and scalability.
Why Businesses Need to Act Now
The 2025 IBM i Marketplace Survey is clear: Modernization is no longer optional—it’s mission-critical. Legacy AS400/IBM i systems are solid but constrained by outdated tools, talent shortages, and siloed data. To compete in a cloud-native, data-centric, API-driven world, businesses must evolve.
- Delaying modernization increases the risk of:
- Security breaches due to unpatched systems
- Talent gaps due to retirement of RPG professionals
- Rising IT costs from inefficiencies
- Missed opportunities in analytics, automation, and mobility
How Programmers.io Can Help Modernize Your IBM i Systems
If you're ready to take the leap, Programmers.io is your trusted IBM i/AS400 partner.
With decades of experience in IBM i development, cloud migration, API integration, UI transformation, and DevOps enablement, Programmers.io has helped Fortune 500 enterprises and SMBs future-proof their legacy systems without disruption.
Why Choose Programmers.io?
✅ Dedicated IBM i Experts – Skilled in RPG, COBOL, CL, DB2, Java, Node.js, and more
✅ End-to-End Modernization Services – From code conversion and GUI reengineering to API deployment and hybrid cloud architecture
✅ Flexible Engagement Models – Onshore, offshore, or hybrid teams tailored to your needs
✅ Proven Tools and Methodologies – Agile development, DevOps, open-source enablement, and containerization support
✅ Security-First Approach – Full compliance with HIPAA, GDPR, PCI-DSS, and industry-specific standards
✅ 100% Transparency – Regular reporting, continuous feedback, and measurable KPIs