Re: Happy i5/OS 2008?

Aaron,

It certainly is a quandary which IBM has sown. There is no doubt. But, it is
too late to change it, no matter how stubborn some of the community remains.

Here is the suggestion. What brings us together is i5/OS. It runs on AS/400,
iSeries, System i5, System i servers (all called System i), and soon to be
on "other platforms". If we are talking about the OS - which is most of what
we do, we call it i5/OS. If we are talking hardware, we talk about the
server name - currently "System i" is the name of the family.

Certainly, when we talk specifics about ~our~ situation, we might talk about
our hardware and our software, etc. - no different than my "Windows" running
on my "Dell", for example. But, if I am selling our future to ANYone, inside
or outside the community, I would reference this as i5/OS.

Ultimately, when talking to our end-user community, we should not have a
need to reference the OS or the hardware. We have prospects who say "does it
run on Windows?" because a vendor told them that. They really do not care
about "windows", but they see it as something they must have. And if all
they have heard is AS/400 for years, they consider it needs to be replaced.
If we called our internal systems by the name of the application, then the
hardware and OS would not matter, and we may not be in a market that is
losing ground.

This started with an email that was selling me education for iSeries from a
company with 400 in their name. What they are actually selling is i5/OS
education. Now it is 2008, shouldn't they get with the program?

Trevor



On 12/31/07 2:42 PM, "Aaron Bartell" <albartell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

It is NOT about the name, but about PERCEPTION. If the world thinks AS/400

is old, and you call it an AS/400, you are propagating OLD.

Perception is changed as soon as a new experience happens. As soon as
someone experiences something positive on the AS/400 (i.e. RPG CGI, RPG Web
Services, Java, Linux, virtualization, EGL, etc) they have a new perception
that the box can do more than they originally thought. I, for one, think
the name AS/400 still applies - AS=Application System right? (I am not sure
where the 400 came from). What's wrong with using that name for the boxes
that are currently leaving the production line? In the end, the whole
reason for all the new cool features coming out for System i is still so we
can use it to run applications.

I agree we need to keep up with IBM's naming no matter how bad it is, but we
also need to deal with reality. As others have more or less expressed, it
is not black and white but instead an education process to iterate it's
historic names and include mention of the new name. Just stating the new
name, when dealing with customers, is a dangerous game to play.

To wrap up my response, I still have no idea how to make a general reference
to the machine so I just say "i5" or "System i5". I have tried to follow
your posts of definition, but it seems that the context of the conversation
(hardware vs. software) dictates the name one should provide where as before
we could simply say AS/400 and everyone knew we meant the big black (or
white) box sitting in the corner running OS/400. Now we have to say System
i when talking hardware and i5/OS when talking about the software? What a
mess.

Trevor, I commend you for your efforts. You definitely are fighting an
uphill battle :-) I will try to do my best and teach those I am in touch
with.

Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com