Re: Decisions (was Re: Java and the AS/400)

** Reply to note from DAsmussen <DAsmussen@aol.com> Sat, 29 Nov 1997
20:38:27 EST

> Oh no! If the IBM ad's purveyed _THIS_, I'd be happy. What I don't like
> about the current advertisements is that they purvey _NOTHING_. As stated
> earlier, the "what" is missing from the "e-business" campaign. A healthy
> "we can come in and 'e-ize' your shop regardless of platform" would be
> nice. Unfortunately, any of us that has dealt with them knows that they
> usually cannot even effectively implement _their own_ platforms. Contact a
> couple of IBM sales rep's (say, an IR or two and your local) and see if
> you don't get conflicting answers regarding what you need to implement
> "e-business".

Sure, I'd be happy to agree that business partners, IBM sales reps,
affiliates, and remarketers all employ people who will give different
responses to the question. 

Accurate responses can only come with a bit of exploration into the nature
of the customers business to determine what areas of their operation are
open to streamlining via eBusiness and what parts might be able to find new
markets over the internet. 

Often, the answer will have more to do with what the partner has to sell
than what the customer needs to buy. 

   
> Nope, no typo. They (the former employer) had run warehouses before (and
> received a trade write-up for it). Because IBM's implementation wasn't the
> "exact same product, with the exact same volume", IBM wasn't interested.

Oh, I get it. The problem was that IBM wanted an exact match! Okay, I
thought what you were saying was that IBM didn't care about experience but
you are saying they wanted too much. Got it.

> But this is the _EXACT_ same thing that I was decrying earlier that you
> said didn't exist! More heinous, you specify IS people instead of
> management. On the contrary, I think that it's the IS people making the
> good decisions while management specifies the "language/platform du jour".

Not true at all, Dean. You said that you think that upper management is for
some reason paging through a MIS trade pub and reads an ad, then calls MIS
and says, "Order me some of this NT stuff, I want to do my payroll with it!"

I am saying that it is MIS guys who are running NT 5.0 betas on their home
machines. It's these guys who download all the latest whiz bang plug ins off
the internet and who swallow the big, "To be released Real Soon Now!" lie.
It was MIS guys that made the decisions to wait three years for Win95 when
OS/2 was already on the market. It was MIS guys that decided to wait two and
half years for EISA when MCA was on the market. It is MIS guys who will wait
the next three years for NT to be ready for the enterprise rather than
deploy AS/400 solutions now. 

The "why" all boils down to the same thing. The exec who wants to know what
ebusiness is and what it means to his company will call numbers to find out.
He calls MIS and asks. The answer he gets is, "We can put up a web site for
about fifteen to twenty thousand. Actually doing business over the web will
be a re-engineering process that will cost about $500,000." He says, "Well,
put up the web site and let's see if we are getting enough hits to make us
believe that we'd do enough business to spend the half mil."

So when that MIS guy goes to build his web site, how many buy an AS/400? How
many buy an RS/6000? How many buy a Compaq and load up the same version of
NT that they have been playing with at home?

Okay, how about a different scenario. Take a random 100 computer geeks off
the Comdex floor. Tell them we want an SQL data base to process requests
from a web site and we want to return HTML tables generated from that
response. 

Ask them:
A. Can S/390s do this?
B. Can AS/400s do this? 
C. Can Unix do this?
D. Can NT do this?

How many are going to answer yes to B? How many will answer yes to D? How
many will stop you and say, "Yes, both AS/400s and NT can do this, but of
the two, the AS/400 is far more reliable. If what we are talking about is
engineering a business process that we will rely on as a channel to our
customers, we should look at the more reliable solution."

So if a hundred execs ask a hundred computer geeks, how come you blame the
execs for the answers?

> But the "what", "when", and "why" remains etherial. Personally, I wouldn't
> invite the Dennis Leary portrayed in these ads into my house, let alone my
> business. Give me a freakin' break -- are you saying that non-technical
> persons know to what this ad campaign speaks? _WRONG_! The "Wall Street
> Journal" doesn't speak to e-business, it speaks of the InterNet. Per my
> earlier gripe, "e-business" is just another IBM catchprase that the rest
> of the industry _DOES NOT_ use, like "NetWork centric".

Okay. I'm not all that sure about what Dennis Leary person. I guess I've
missed that ad. 

I have heard a couple ads and seen a couple. There was one about someone who
bought golf clubs on the internet. One about someone who downloaded a virus.
One where a couple guys were looking at web sites and liked the flaming
logo. Oh, and recently there was one where one guy asked another if he knew
how to do X on the internet. 

To me, the reason for using eBusiness is because "Internet" is far
overworked and may have already been abused by the potential customer
anyway. For instance, a guy who has already sunk a bunch of cash into a web
site that doesn't make any money might not want to hear the old Internet
buzz word any more. Of course, it also has to do with the fact that
eBusiness might not have anything to do with the Internet at all. Your
company could be best served with an EDI/Intranet hybrid. 

Plus, many people hear the Internet buzz word and think "WWW". I think that
it's important to realize that there is a huge amount of potential use of
the internet that doesn't use the Web. Certainly technical people who
understand the internet and how it works know all the potential, but the guy
who only sees demos of "Internet" products and services done with a web
browser will soon come to believe that the Web IS the Internet.

Now the question is whether IBM should just go along spewing the same buzz
words as the rest of the industry, or whether there is any value in trying
to differentiate by using new terms. You are right that the new terms might
be just as confusing as the old ones. Hopefully, there won't be the same
fixed concepts attached.

> >  I would like to see them provide hardware to school systems. But I think
> what
> >  I would really like to see them do is provide an internet connection for
> >  schools that accesses Advantis so that they can have a direct connect to
> >  AS/400s that are maintained by IBM. IBM could upgrade the systems as they
> see
> >  fit and use them for other purposes (public web sites, sales demos,
> >  whatever). My guess is that there are a lot of CPU cycles sitting around
> >  waiting for a demo or whatever that could be used. 
>   
> Why? Internet connections are transparent. I don't know if I'm connected
> to an AS/400 or a Burroughs Posting Machine when I'm on the Internet.
> David uses a PC with Linux as the operating system. Do you know the
> difference?

Thank you for so quickly making my point. Because I used the word internet,
you didn't even pause to consider what I was talking about. The complaint
was that schools can't train AS/400 people. The first suggestion was that
IBM donate more hardware to schools. The next complaint was that IBM only
does this with older hardware. My suggestion was that IBM should provide a
connection TO AS/400s across the internet so that schools can teach AS/400
skills on up to date boxes that are currently at IBM. 

This form of distributed computing is what IBM is trying to sell and doing
something like this would help to train people in exactly the appropriate
computing model.

> >  So maybe there is a way for IBM to structure donating Java
workstations to
> >  universities and hooking them to Advantis and then giving them use of
some
> >  subset of internal machines. 
>   
> Lost me here...

I shouldn't have said internet. I should have said, "remote connection". By
subset of internal machines I meant that IBM could pick a set of machines
that they feel might have available clock cycles for the training. Perhaps
even using the machines that IBM uses for giving classes on. Or for product
demos.

But maybe the switch to channel marketing has made such machines really
scarce and this isn't plausible.

> Dean Asmussen Enterprise Systems Consulting, Inc. Fuquay-Varina, NC USA
> E-Mail: DAsmussen@aol.com
 

Chris Rehm
Mr.AS400@ibm.net

How often can you afford to be unexpectedly out of business?
Get an AS/400.


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