RE: IBM overhauls iSeries for the long haul

[qsrvbas@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Tom Liotta)]

midrange-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>   1. Re: IBM overhauls iSeries for the long haul
>
>And if a vendor actually NEEDS the latest hardware and OS in order to be
>confident of COMPATIBILITY with the latest hardware and OS, that kind of
>suggests that the vendor's products use a lot of hacks.


No, it doesn't, regardless of what anyone chooses to infer.

Compatibility tests are only one part of it even though a commonly necessary 
part. It is also true that some vendors are committed to i5 (and iSeries and 
AS/400) and i5/OS (and OS/400).

When a new release comes out, I know we want to test the release itself for the 
parts that our products support as well as any parts we need just to be able to 
run tests, e.g., do Client Access and iSeries Access connect okay? Why? 
Because, believe it or not, new releases have bugs and new documentation has 
typos or is incorrect. If we as a vendor can find some of these and report to 
IBM, we do some small part to raise the quality for the entire market, not just 
for ourselves and not just for our customers.

As for our products, parts of OS/400 are changed in every release. We want to 
know if any changes need PTFs from IBM. If so, we like those PTFs to be 
available to our customers as soon as GA comes around.

We're not interested in hearing from our customers that a product shows an 
error and then finding out we need to get a problem opened with IBM and then 
waiting for a PTF to be written and then testing it and then notifying our 
customer that they can download and apply this PTF as soon as IBM releases it.

Sure, we do run into that every once in a while. But we _much_ prefer finding 
it early ourselves and having the PTF in the very first cume package that's 
available. We much prefer that customers never even realize a problem ever 
existed.

For committed vendors, early ship/beta has nothing to do with hacks. It has to 
do with customer satisfaction of the whole iSeries experience.

Tom Liotta

-- 
Tom Liotta
The PowerTech Group, Inc.
19426 68th Avenue South
Kent, WA 98032
Phone  253-872-7788 x313
Fax    253-872-7904
http://www.powertech.com


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