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-- -- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] The AS/400 is a niche machine, for a specific market. It'll never be huge in the market. Niche products usually do well in that environment. Volvo, Saab, Mercedes, and Ben & Jerrys come to mind. Lets not ever expect more than that from the AS/400. Its place is "one call does it all". Its a complete solution from one source that works right, everytime. We never want the AS/400 dancing on the knife edge of the newest fads. --------------------------------------------------------- Booth Martin http://www.MartinVT.com Booth@MartinVT.com --------------------------------------------------------- -------Original Message------- From: midrange-l@midrange.com Date: Wednesday, July 31, 2002 13:33:48 To: midrange-l@midrange.com Subject: RE: Microsoft .NET Server announcement the other big news today on the non technical front is IBM consulting's acquisition of PwC. The papers say that PwC is big in the systems integration consulting business where IBM consulting is more into services. To me, this means that IBM consulting and hence all of IBM will be more wedded to windows and MS than ever before. The only hope for our as400 is for it to be spun off from IBM as an independent company. Steve Richter -----Original Message----- From: midrange-l-admin@midrange.com [mailto:midrange-l-admin@midrange.com]On Behalf Of Bernd Schaefers Sent: Wednesday, July 31, 2002 1:07 PM To: midrange-l@midrange.com Subject: Re: Microsoft .NET Server announcement On the other hand this from iNEWSWire UK: * MICROSOFT DIVISION AIMS AT ISERIES ERP MARKET A Microsoft division is currently pushing its wares at the iSeries market. Danish ERP firm Navision, which was recently gobbled up by the Redmond giant in a deal worth USD 1.45 billion, has ported its Attain ERP suite to the iSeries. Now Navision's UK channel partners are raring to go at the new market this opens up for them. The story goes back to February when Navision and Big Blue signed a global marketing agreement to promote Attain, already a popular choice for xSeries users, on the iSeries. However, since that time it became apparent that Navision was well on its way to becoming a member of what Microsoft calls its "Business Solutions Family", leading those industry observers that even noticed the announcement to assume that the iSeries deal was dead in the water; no one could really foresee a time that Microsoft would be helping Big Blue sell the iSeries. (Intriguingly, IBM was the main distributor for Navision in Denmark from 1987 until 1994 and, at that time, it made its own bid for the company which was rejected.) But amidst the buyout news, Navision had pressed ahead anyway and, in fact, quietly announced that it had bought Attain to the iSeries on schedule on July 3. At the time, Niels Bo Theilgaard, Executive Vice President, Product Organisation for Navision, commented: "Making Navision Attain available on IBM eServer iSeries shows the commitment of Navision to helping mid-sized companies to grow." Although there wasn't much of a fanfare surrounding the port, Navision in the UK subsequently held a meeting for its "Solution Centre" channel partners in the UK at its Borehamwood headquarters in Hertfordshire, with input from IBM and major iSeries distributor Magirus. Simon Bishop, managing director of Navision partner ProAccess Ltd was suitably impressed and went for the concept "immediately". He says: "An AS/400 platform for us has been typically a Mapics or BPCS-type platform and so, from our perspective, Navision is a very suitable replacement for those products now. And so customers out there who are used to spending big bucks can go and get a superb midrange product that's very well featured for not a lot of money, in my opinion. I think that kicks good life into the iSeries so people will say: 'Let's not go off and get an NT box'; they'll say: 'Let's put it on a leading midrange platform'." Bishop describes Attain as having excellent financials and order processing and distribution capabilities, "But you also have a superb CRM sales product and a superb CRM service as well." His company, ProAccess, which has been established for ten years, spent some time weighing up ERP packages to resell a couple of years ago and, at the time, the other contender that met the company's criteria was Great Plains, another company that subsequently sold out to Microsoft. The acquisition of both Navision and Great Plains is seen by most analysts as Microsoft's big push into the big boys' enterprise software league and one that will enable it to take on everyone >from SSA and J.D. Edwards to SAP and Baan. Ninety five per cent of Great Plains' revenue comes from the States, where it is seemingly ubiquitous, and 95 per cent of Navision's comes from Europe. There are rumours that an ERP firm with a specialty in the non- Romanesque language requirements of the middle and far east are next within Redmond's sights. So, now that Microsoft is in the iSeries ERP space, should the other established iSeries vendors (many of whom have had fairly rocky "cross platform" strategies in recent times) be worried? Bishop answers: "Yes, I think everyone should be, but it's stirring up complacency, really. There's a lot of ERP vendors out there that are complacent and I think Microsoft's R&D is going to make the product better. I mean we've got visibility on the new versions of Attain and there are some superb integration facilities with Microsoft products, so yes, I think everyone should stand up and take note." _______________________________________________ This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing list To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options, visit: http://lists.midrange.com/cgi-bin/listinfo/midrange-l or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@midrange.com Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives at http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l. _______________________________________________ This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing list To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options, visit: http://lists.midrange.com/cgi-bin/listinfo/midrange-l or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@midrange.com Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives at http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l. . -- [ Content of type image/gif deleted ] --
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