Re: Casino switches to AIX

On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 9:55 AM, Larry Bolhuis <lbolhuis@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Well I for one would have to say that Joe has rung the bell with this one.
I give him 'three dings!'

Recently one of our customer was purchased and moved off the i to a PC
package. It was a decree not a discussion and they were simply told: "It
does everything you need so shut up and go back to work." Well they found
out at go-live that it doesn't. For example you can only ship to each
customer once per day. That's a problem and the solution from IT is "Learn
how to work with it." The software is now running the company. Their IT
is now "Low Cost" and the entire rest of the company is paying for it.

In one of Bob Tipton's books he discusses the two extremes of the spectrum
for IT folks, Low cost and High Value - You pick. IT is either a necessary
expense or competitive advantage. It appears that the majority of windows
type shops are aiming low while the i shops are going for value. In my
opinion it's the high value people that will survive.

what I dont follow is why IBM mgmt, the highly praised Dr Frank
included, have neglected to build on this advantage and make IBM i
better. ILE needs reflection capabilities. CL has to work better
with SQL. The developers of PHP were able to add object oriented
features to that language, RPG needs the same. IBM i needs to be open
sourced. IBM is great at hardware. It is terrible with software.