Don't Blame The Hardware

The July 13th Corporate Strategies article would seem to indicate that
the AS/400 was the cause of all the problems at the construction company
featured in the article.

What is most interesting is that the software is defined as 10-15 years
old. If this is truly the case, what operating system was it designed
for? Since the AS/400 hardware and OS/400 operating system are only ten
years old, it must have been designed for another system. The article
made reference to flat, unconnected files. Since the AS/400 , and it's
predecessor, the Sysyrm/38,  have had built in database support (fully
realational for the AS/400, the application was probably written for the
System/36.

Couple an ancient application with a staff that was probably given no
resources for training, or enhancing the system, and you end up with an
antiquated piece of junk. Now management wants NT, so they buy new
hardware. This sounds fairly stupid, siince the AS/400 will run NT, and
is more reliable than the currently available PC hardware.

All in all, it sounds like an attempt to cover up poor management,

Bob Larkin
Consultant
Houston, Tx
(713)7890-9552

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