Retirement of the Forum
Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2025 9:59 pm
The Forum started life on 10 May 2008. There was a time when it was one of the few viable places to discuss TM1 or, as IBM would have it, Planning Analytics. It was the successor to the much loved Applix forum, which was in turn successor to a long (almost) forgotten Yahoo group.
However 18 years is a long time in technology. Technologies and communities rise and fall, and none last forever. Over the last few years most discussions have migrated to the IBM community sites.
Most of the new account applications that we receive are from spammers, but it still takes time and effort to process them. Given the diminishing profile of the Forum that, and the ongoing maintenance of the software, is no longer a fruitful pursuit.
Consequently the team of administrators has decided that the time has come to put the site into pre-retirement. We will be closing the forum to new membership after the first week of September 2025. There will probably also be an outage for a few hours later in September 2025 as the hosting moves to a new set of hands.
We do however recognise the ongoing reference value of the thousands of posts that have been made over the years, so the intention is to keep the site running until at least May 2028, the 20th anniversary of the Forum. We estimate that by that time the reference value will have diminished to the point of not being particularly relevant.
Posting rights for existing members will be unchanged in the short term at least. We will evaluate that if necessary as time goes on.
So this is a last(ish) opportunity to say farewell to all who have participated in the Forum over the last decade and a half. The MVPs deserve special mention, but the Community Contributors were also vital to the Forum’s past success. Even those who have asked well thought out questions helped to make the Forum what it was. To all of you, thank you for being part of a great community. It has been a fun ride.
Mike Cowie
Alan Kirk
Steve Rowe
Martin Ryan
David Usherwood
Jim Wood
Michel Zijlema
September 2025.
However 18 years is a long time in technology. Technologies and communities rise and fall, and none last forever. Over the last few years most discussions have migrated to the IBM community sites.
Most of the new account applications that we receive are from spammers, but it still takes time and effort to process them. Given the diminishing profile of the Forum that, and the ongoing maintenance of the software, is no longer a fruitful pursuit.
Consequently the team of administrators has decided that the time has come to put the site into pre-retirement. We will be closing the forum to new membership after the first week of September 2025. There will probably also be an outage for a few hours later in September 2025 as the hosting moves to a new set of hands.
We do however recognise the ongoing reference value of the thousands of posts that have been made over the years, so the intention is to keep the site running until at least May 2028, the 20th anniversary of the Forum. We estimate that by that time the reference value will have diminished to the point of not being particularly relevant.
Posting rights for existing members will be unchanged in the short term at least. We will evaluate that if necessary as time goes on.
So this is a last(ish) opportunity to say farewell to all who have participated in the Forum over the last decade and a half. The MVPs deserve special mention, but the Community Contributors were also vital to the Forum’s past success. Even those who have asked well thought out questions helped to make the Forum what it was. To all of you, thank you for being part of a great community. It has been a fun ride.
Mike Cowie
Alan Kirk
Steve Rowe
Martin Ryan
David Usherwood
Jim Wood
Michel Zijlema
September 2025.
