RE: Native GUI (was Saving the System i: Fight Rather Than Switch)

The concept works reasonably well to update clients at LAN logon for
things like AV signature files however, as noted, not everyone is on the
LAN.  For AV stuff it's easy to configure them to d/l updates direct
from the likes of McAfee, Symantec, etc.  But for our own applications
that's not going to cut it.

Yes, web services are the basic way to go, although I still favor a pure
browser experience with host-based processing and data management over
using the services to update a basic fat client architecture.
Personalization within a browser UI is done all the time.  Not only by
Google and Yahoo but by internal developers; our intranet is
personalized and the pages are generated by content from SQL Server.  

And while I don't think we need i5/OS to be priced the same as AIX and I
don't think unbundling i5/OS components is a good idea, there has to be
a compromise that leaves the iSeries in a competitive position.  We are
willing to pay something of a premium for iSeries HW & i5/OS, but that
premium has to be reasonable and in my situation it simply is not.

On the hardware: iSeries RAM prices need to come down by about an order
of magnitude.  ECC DDR2 simply is not that expensive.  OS activations
should either be on a sliding scale where each successive CPU costs less
to activate or cut to maybe a 3rd of what they are today.  While I'm at
it, flatten the processor tier: P05/P10 for 520s, P10-P20 for 550s,
P20-P30 for 570s, and P40 for 595s.  And give some reasonable trade-in
credit on RAM for people upgrading to the latest HW generation.  And lop
about a 3rd off the current DASD & RAID card list prices.

John A. Jones, CISSP
Americas Information Security Officer
Jones Lang LaSalle, Inc.
V: +1-630-455-2787 F: +1-312-601-1782
john.jones@xxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Steve Richter
Sent: Monday, December 11, 2006 12:46 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Native GUI (was Saving the System i: Fight Rather Than
Switch)

On 12/11/06, Jones, John (US) <John.Jones@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

ClickOnce doesn't deploy to clients unless the clients all run off a 
network share.  Not reasonable for small branch offices or remote 
workers.  It does seem like it could be useful if you're running IIS 
as your web server infrastructure.  For workstations something like 
SUS would be the more appropriate tool but it doesn't work across 
non-WAN-attached devices.

A potential disadvantage I see is supporting such a beast.  If every 
client's interface is done to their perspective as you say, then every

client has a potentially different look and feel.  I don't think this 
is a help-desk friendly situation.  Granted, I haven't read the site 
in detail so I could be wrong on this point.

I dont know enough about it.  In theory I am just thinking it would be
workable for every desktop client to check on startup for updates from
the server. I admit many have tried this ( myself included ) and still
had problems.

Another is my ongoing point about remote/mobile deployments; No 
company that has any concern about security is going to open ODBC to

the 'net.

web services are the up and coming way to write network apps.  a web
service is the same in basic ways to an sql stored procedure that is
called via ODBC.

I'm also not about to buy a VPN concentrator that can support the 
necessary number of concurrent connections.  That would be 
prohibitively expensive compared to a couple hundred bucks for a 3rd 
party SSL certificate & a few host CPU cycles to handle the encryption

(or even compared to buying the crypto accelerator).

And this approach is still not cross-platform.  If you're going to let

partners or customers access your apps, you have to be able to deliver

to every platform your partners use.  As often as Windows is that 
platform, it can't be considered a guarantee.

desktop apps that access the server via web services. that is the
future, no? Let the end user clients worry about coding and deploying
their apps to their desktops. The server dept focuses on the corporate
applications and web services that provide access to those apps.  All
that is needed for the i5 to compete in this environment is super fast
p5 hardware at market p5 prices.

-Steve
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