what OS2 and ILE have in common. was iSeries (non-) Marketing - part 24, 566

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Hans Boldt
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 1:19 PM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: iSeries (non-) Marketing - part 24,566


>I really don't want to get into a debate on OS/2, and I won't say
>anything further on OS/2 than this. But I remember OS/2 very well,
>having used it both at home and at work, long after most others had
>given up on it. Sure, there were mistakes on IBM's part. But even if
>they had thrown 10 times as much money into marketing it, I don't
>think it would have gotten much further than it did.

>Cheers! Hans


OS/2's failure is relevant because it helps us understand how the iSeries
can succeed.

OS2 and 32 bit windows were once both the same because IBM and MS were both
working together on the OS.  The two companies differed for whatever
reasons, took their OSes and went their separate ways. I am guessing on the
specifics of all of this, but what happened next is critical.

IBM decided OS2 was done, just like it thinks ILE is done today, and turned
the product over to the marketers. MS decided that windows was not done.
Where IBM saw DDE as a good way for processes to communicate with each other
and thought DLLs were a good enough way for applications to provided
interfaces to their functionality, MS did not.

MS added OLE which became knows as COM and ActiveX to windows.
OLE/COM/ActiveX was the OS technology that enabled the Office suite to work
well, it made Excel into a programming tool, and it made Visual Basic into
the most popular programming language of its day. It was not marketing and
advertising that sold Windows.  It was Excel, Word and Visual Basic.

We see something similar taking place over the last few years.  Before .NET,
MS did not have an integrated language environment that would enable all the
languages that are used to program in windows to interop with each other. So
MS management made the investment necessary and developed .NET and CLR (
common language runtime ).  I cant say if CLR is well done or not, but I do
know that it is MS's answer to the requirement for all the programming
languages used on a platform ( or i thru x family of platforms ) to be used
interchangeably with each other.

ILE is IBMs version of the CLR.  It was developed years ago and was a good
first step toward allowing modules written in different languages to work
together in an application.  But clearly more has to be done to allow
complete integration.  Like I said, I am guessing on all of this, so it
might be that IBM sees Java and the JVM as the replacement for ILE.  If so,
the should say so and then explain how C and RPG will in a JVM LE.

-Steve