Letter from our CEO

Now What?

A few weeks ago, we announced a major investment in Rocket by Bain Capital. Since the news came out, I’ve received hundreds of phone calls and emails from customers, partners, Rocketeers, and others asking what this means for our future. I thought I’d share a few of my thoughts on that in this November letter.

Rocket + IBM zSystems

Rocket (together with Bain Capital) think this is the most exciting time to be investing in, and focused on, mainframe technology, mainframe solutions, and the mainframe community. We are accelerating our product development pipeline to help our customers maximize the value of this powerful platform and drive even more application development on the platform. By now you’ve heard me talk about Zowe (the first open source platform for IBM zSystems/OS) and we are introducing the first commercially available product offerings built on top of Zowe. We’re hiring more software engineers and more product designers, so let us know when you are ready to join our team and become a Rockeeter!

Rocket + IBM i

Alex Woodie recently wrote a piece in IT Jungle pointing out that the rumors circulating about Rocket selling pieces of our portfolio were just that – rumors. The article includes a terrific quote from David Humphrey, a managing director at Bain Capital, saying that they are looking forward to working with Rocket based on our ability to successfully transform our business model and continually improve our innovative solutions, as well as our strong record of integrating acquisitions. It is worth reiterating that we offer a range of IBM i-related IT solutions from application lifecycle management, DevOps, application modernization, mobile development and terminal emulation, in addition to high availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR). You can expect us to accelerate our work on this very important platform.

Rocket + MultiValue

MultiValue is an often misunderstood (and under-appreciated) application development platform. Rocket MultiValue technology powers applications that millions of end users touch each and every day. We have been in the MultiValue business for a decade now, and from day one we have been committed to providing innovation to our customers and partners. A piece in DBTA called out the fact that with the recent Bain Capital investment we will continue to devote significant resources to our R&D organization.

The Rest of the Story

I am excited about developing and delivering even more robust solutions that help our our IBM zSystems, IBM i, and MultiValue customers and partners. Of course, these three platforms don’t cover everything we do here at Rocket. But it’s fair to say that the Bain Capital investment is going to move everything we do to the next level.

With Bain Capital as our partner, we are ready to launch our fourth decade of growth (what we call Rocket Chapter 4). Our vision is to wake up every day and treat you better than anyone else through differentiated experiences driven by empathy, humanity, trust and love. You will let me know how well we are living up to that vision.

Onward and upward.

Andrew J. Youniss
President and CEO, Rocket Software, Inc.