Re: WDSC Futures

General Electric (GE) make great Jet Aircraft Engines.
The sales/marketing model for their engines seems to work and the product is a
high-level of quality.
For years people have used GE as an example, as follows:
"GE, they make great jet engines, but they can't make a good $20 toaster to save
their lives!"

The issue being they don't have the infrastructure to offer and profit from
quality, low-priced products. "Low price" is a relative term.

It is far beyond my wildest imagination that any company could justify spending
6-figures on a compiler of any quality for a single system. But if you use that
quarter million dollar price for a compiler (that Jon mentioned) as the jet
engine, then it explains why there are issues with "low priced" iSeries tooling.


The problem in general, and not specific to IBM, is that sales people (and that
could be someone at GE, IBM or the owner of a sole proprietorship in the IT
industry) when asked "who is the target audience for this product?" they tend to
reply with "it's for everyone..."  Problem is, it isn't for everyone, but nobody
wants to turn away a sale even if it doesn't fit the customer's true needs.  
To their defense, often a prospect's desires are bigger than their needs, and
they buy something bigger ("more costly" in today's world) than they really
need. I can't count the number of shops I've been in where the system was
showcased to the company's customers--showing them how powerful their computer
is. Of course this was back when "big" was associated with "fast" and
"powerful".

Generally, everyone wants to sell their stuff the U.S. Government so they can
get 10 to 100 times what the commercial market will pay for it. But at some
point you have to decide if you're going to be in the Toaster business or the
Jet Engine business or both. But if your toaster business has the same level of
overhead as the Jet Engine business, well, I doubt you'll be selling many
toasters, and even if you do, I'm sure the stockholders will demand that you
eliminate/consolidate your less profitable lines of business. Which is ironic
considering you can probably profit more by selling "toasters to the masses"
rather than just one big Jet Engine every now and then.


-Bob Cozzi
www.i5PodCast.com
Ask your manager to watch i5 TV


-----Original Message-----
From: wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of albartell
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2007 8:46 AM
To: 'Websphere Development Studio Client for iSeries'
Subject: Re: [WDSCI-L] WDSC Futures

Nice of IBM to decide this right as Vista becomes available, don't you

think?

This specific point/scenario is really what makes it feel like a bait and
switch to me.  I am still scratching my head at the whole ordeal.  George
made is sound like this AE stuff was only going to be for a time, but then
why did marketing do it in the first place?  Really makes a person not want
to adopt anything more than the most basic features in WDSC, knowing that
most likely those will always be no additional charge; but the more advanced
features carry a potential burden of many $K's in the future.

Here is a story on it for anybody that hasn't read it yet:
http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh032607-story01.html


Aaron Bartell


-----Original Message-----
From: wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Bruce Guetzkow
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2007 7:41 AM
To: WDSci-L Posting
Subject: Re: [WDSCI-L] WDSC Futures

Tom:

<snip>
Just to see what we're talking about here, does anybody have a guess when a
"future Windows OS" might show up?
</snip>

Yes...now...it's called Vista.  CODE won't be ported to Vista, so if you buy
a new computer and it has Vista on it, or if you decide to upgrade, you
won't be able to use CODE.  That means the only "graphical" editors
available to you on Vista will be SDA and (ugh) RLU.

Nice of IBM to decide this right as Vista becomes available, don't you
think?

--Bruce Guetzkow


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