<< I would be equally wary of jumping to the newest, shiniest thing.>>
In my travels over the last nearly 40 years in the business, I have
frequently encountered the "Me too" denizens of upper management.
This usually entails decisions made by the MBAM (management by airline
magazine) method, the "conversation the boss had with another boss over
cocktails in the first class section of an airplane" method, or (shudder)
"My fraternity brother has this system, so we need one too" method.
Been there, seen it.
Paul Nelson
Cell 708-670-6978
Office 512-392-2577
nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John Yeung
Sent: Thursday, October 17, 2013 4:19 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Where can I find a list of current IBM i companies?
On Thu, Oct 17, 2013 at 4:11 PM, Stone, Joel <Joel.Stone@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
No matter how good or bad the iseries may be, the city gov
would probably be best served with a platform that is running
many other city government organizations.
I believe many other cities still do use the i.
With iseries, you are re-inventing the wheel for each of these
[other systems that must be integrated] and it is enormously
expensive. With a platform that is used by thousands of other
cities, it is simply a matter of following a setup procedure from
the vendor/county/state/fed.
I agree with the premise that reinventing the wheel is expensive, but
you haven't provided any evidence that sticking with the i necessarily
entails reinventing the wheel for things. You also haven't provided
evidence that going to some other platform doesn't *also* entail
reinventing the wheel for things.
They are and should be concerned with what other CITIES are
running, which is why they want to drop iseries (as stated by
you, other cities apparently have moved off iseries as heard at
city leadership conferences).
I think it does make sense for a city to be more concerned with other
cities than with businesses. Mike never said they (the IT group he
works for) know for sure what the upper management knows or has heard;
it was just a working theory. I would not be surprised if plenty of
cities do think of the i as outdated, and some have surely migrated
away from it. I also would not be surprised if (as Mike was
wondering) some cities' upper management *think* they have migrated,
but haven't really. (For example, if a city now has a browser
interface to some important functions that they used to do on green
screens, it could well be that they still have their i.)
So if you want to keep working for the city and NOT be
grouped with the legacy platform, then EMBRACE the
search for the new system and be a cheerleader for it.
Well, this comment has value to the extent that it attempts to counter
"unjustified" loyalty or attachment to existing systems. I would be
equally wary of jumping to the newest, shiniest thing.
The thing to embrace is a sincere examination of the situation. That
is, be open. Be rational. Be objective. There are definitely
advantages to platforms other than the i. There are advantages to the
i. There are advantages to staying with what you have (be it i or
something else). Are the advantages of a new system big enough to
justify the cost of changing to it? In most cases, it's impossible to
have perfect knowledge of all these things, but at least you can
strive to avoid being closed-minded.
John
midrange.com
