RE: Buell Duncan

In the IT industry, probably above all others, change is the one constant,
it is inevitable. Manufacturers come and go, technologies come and go, and
people come and go. 

I guess that many of the readers of Midrange-L will recall working on
System/3x boxes earlier in their careers, perhaps with fond memories. I
first worked professionally on Datapoint, cross-training to System/38 after
four years, and I don't mind confessing I loved them both, as different as
they were.  The current 8xx systems we know and love today evolved from
those Neanderthal (or Homo Erectus) equivalents.

As IBM mid-rangers, we have lived through over a dozen different releases of
the OS, over a dozen different major hardware releases - three cheers for
all these changes.  Sure, there have been growing pains along the way, but
IMHO they were well worth it.

Now to my point ...

If IBM make their execs play musical chairs, it is obviously a methodology
that is working.  I know, I know, it could easily be argued that more
advances could have been made if this or if that ...

The fact is that the AS/400, sorry iSeries :-) , is the best commercial
server on the market, we all know that, many more people should know it, but
they've never heard of it.  The changes that have hit the street year after
year have come out of the IBM system.

Also, the iSeries ignorance has not been exclusively ex-IBM; I hope Buell
and many more ex-iSeries luminaries end up in the highest possible echelons
of IBM to correct this problem.  Maybe then, IBM will start to treat the
iSeries with the respect it deserves.

Jeff Bull


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