Re: IBM Spin Doctors on AS/400 Marketing

At 07:12 AM 10/29/97 -0800, you wrote:
>
>I do client/server and internetworking consulting and I hear it at least
>once a week.  "NT is the future thats the way to go".  I invariably ask
>what feature of NT do you specifically want that the platform you have
>doesn't offer.  There is either no answer or they claim to need a feature
>that ins't _yet_ in NT(but promised REAL SOON NOW).  
>
>I have clients running Unix, OS/2, Novell, OS/400, MVS, VMS, and various
>combinations of them all and nearly all of them are at least thinking
>about NT.  And one or two can even tell me why.  
>
>There is a mass histeria about NT that is only partially the result of the
>marketing MS does.  The other part is the trade press treating it like an
>inevitability.  I don't think there is anything IBM can do to counter this
>effect other than to run lots of ads and CONTINUE to add great new
>technology to the AS.  
>
>More to the point IS people get WDWGTNT(Why Don't We Go To NT) on a
>regular basis from managers.  These non-technical managers are interested
>in what computers they are using only because it's "Sexy", cool and hip to
>talk about computers.  NT(because of marketing and the press) is all of
>those things.
>
>Will AS/400 advertising make it at least two of the three?  Who knows.
>
The AS/400 technology was essentially introduced in 1978 when the System/38
was first announced. Every program ever written on a System/38 runs today,
unchanged, on an AS/400. Let’s look at some competitive architectures:

Wang was hot in the early 1980s; where is Wang today? Where are Wang’s
customers today? When those customers moved from Wang’s OS, they needed to
completely rewrite their applications.

Digital’s VAX was hot in the late 1980s; where is it today? Where are
Digital’s VAX customers today? When customers move from VAX/VMS, they need
to recompile their applications to Open/VMS. Then the applications run on
Open/VMS in the 32-bit mode of VMS, leaving half of the 64-bit architecture
of DEC Alpha unused.

In the same time frame, the HP3000 MPE operating system was popular.
However, MPE doesn't run on HP’s successor system, the HP9000.

In the early 1990s, UNIX, an allegedly portable operating system, became
popular (moving from one UNIX platform to another requires that the
software be ported and recompiled). Today UNIX is quickly falling out of
favor to Windows NT. Moving from UNIX to Windows NT requires porting and
recompiling.

Now, in the late 1990s, Windows NT is becoming popular. But the PC Server
market has its drawbacks too. Windows NT won’t scale well, and you need a
different server for each and every function. Microsoft runs the core of
its business on an AS/400.

Al



Al Barsa, Jr. - Account for Midrange-L
Barsa Consulting, LLC.  
400 > 390

Phone:  914-251-9400
Fax:    914-251-9406





Private mail should be sent to barsa@ibm.net
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