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Mark,

I do appreciate that in this dialog, you have been civil and it has not
become personal. However, it has become cyclical. You offer objections, I
offer solutions/choices, you offer more and more objections. At this point,
the objections are degrading into silliness.

You tell me that "Grassroots word of mouth should not be the primary method
of marketing, if you know what's good for you", yet I never once suggested
that.

You say "a GUI I/O is not "native" to RPG, the primary development language
on the i, further making the transition more difficult". I have a mac
running a GUI desktop on a Unix OS - not native, yet it seems to work
extremely well. Even PHP does not have its own UI - it uses HTML. And, with
all the third party UI tools available that are "native" to the i, this
objection holds no water any more.

Add to that, I talked about modern solutions using my DB2 and green screens
under the covers, and Steve Richter turns it into a slam on "screen
scraping". It is this kind of negativity and "it's all about me" that can
make Rob Berendt want the discussion to be over.

You can if you want to. Or, you can place barriers. Your choice.

Trevor




On 11/21/08 12:05 PM, "M. Lazarus" <mlazarus@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Trevor,

See inline:

At 11/21/08 12:42 AM, you wrote:
Mark,

In an effort to keep this in the big picture, and avoid splitting hairs on
lots of little out of context sentences, I will answer some.

the reality is that the marketplace has effectively
rejected it. The feedback is that it's too confusing.
I think this is where you start spreading FUD. Uncertainty, and doubt, for
sure. A few pundits on midrange-L who disagree is not marketplace rejection.
A lot of people in the marketplace who are uneducated on the new name is not
wholesale rejection. The word is being spread, inside and outside IBM.

I am not commenting on the marketplace as a whole, rather as one
that attempts to spread the word, I am commenting on the feedback I
am personally receiving. Put simply: Techies and occasionally
managers that are tuned into the i world are often aware of the
system and its changes. Almost everyone else has no idea what the
system is about, let alone its changes. When I try to tell them
about the changes, they are somewhat interested in the technological
advances, but their eyes glaze over when I try to straighten out the
naming confusion. It's a losing battle.


We get a few ads around Common and then silence.
This is not a marketing campaign - this is advertising. Which is part of a
marketing campaign. Grassroots word of mouth is marketing. Awareness is
marketing. I think all the complaints about IBM's marketing of the i are
really about not seeing an ad in the place "I want to see it". And, how many
of us who frequent midrange-l are marketing experts? Ultimately, this really
is a frivolous, and just noisy, claim.
Besides, if that was marketing, IBM would just create a new ad now and then
to shut up the 'faithful'. Personally, this is not the approach I would
suggest to a "multi-billion dollar corporation".

Grassroots word of mouth should not be the primary method of
marketing, if you know what's good for you. It can be a wonderful
adjunct, bolstering your product's image, but to rely on it? No
way! How long has the midrange faithful been extolling the
platform? 25, 30 years?? You are moving the onus of the success of
the platform from IBM, where it belongs, to the ISV's, who are trying
to survive.

The public at large knows all about Microsoft, Apple, AOL, Intel,
AMD, etc. products. Why? Is it because they have superior products
or because they have gotten the word out to the general public? The
public spreading the word is a bonus. All of these companies
advertise SPECIFIC products. They don't just mention their company
name and hope that people will come flocking to them to find out what
offerings there are.


How many new "competitive" i installs have you been
involved with this past year?
All of them. We sell software. The majority have some form of Windows
software package/s to replace, and we have installed several Power5 515s,
and have ordered a bunch of Power6 520 M15s. All of them against Windows
applications and solutions. And, this is as a member of the IBM VIP program.

Two things stand out - when it was a System i, the sale was harder, since
the Windows competitor called it an AS/400. Since the Power6, competing
against Windows has been so much easier - they can't and don't say that IBM
i on Power Systems is "just an AS/400". Our sales cycle has shortened as the
"old AS/400" attack is gone.

I'm glad that it's working for you, but I seem to be fighting an
uphill battle. Based on a lot of the feedback on this list, many
others are facing the same difficulties.


I think we have a different perspective on this. I see the positive impact
of the new platform, and I see a strong future of being able to also deploy
IBM i and Windows in a blade center - a future where we make even more IBM
server sales. When I worked in a hardware business partner, we upgraded
AS/400s and iSeries - where the terminology was a challenge. Now, from a
software perspective, the hardware is de-emphasized. Our customers have no
idea they have DB2 or green screens under the covers of their modern
application. I work everyday with applications running on i that are
competitive - because they have the look and feel of a windows/browser
application, the depth of functionality that comes from the years of
experience we have in the industry, and the rock-solid OS+server under the
covers.
I don't think you get to see that, so you seem much more jaded than i. Or,
is that I?

We have yet to see how the market reacts to the "i on a blade"
packaging. How many i vendors (KBM included!) are charging the same
price for green screen as GUI applications or tools? IBM is leading
the pack decoupling GUI tools from the basic package. GUI is a de
facto standard today.

Also, a GUI I/O is not "native" to RPG, the primary development
language on the i, further making the transition more difficult.



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