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Joe, Buck,

I'm not following this reasoning. It is fairly well established that RPG is the primary development language on the platform. I don't know statistics on the runners up, but Cobol is probably the next most popular. Putting exact numbers on it is futile. Why?

1) IBM needs to produce development tools for RPG, Cobol and other languages, regardless of the exact numbers of users. Otherwise, the platform dies.

2) If IBM does not enable the system to *easily* conform to current standards (native GUI, browser interaction integrated with existing languages, web services, etc, as just a few examples), the user base will continue to erode. The cost to develop this should come under banner of "advertising, marketing and continued viability of the platform." It's currently under the "Well, if they really, really beg us we'll do them a favor, but they'll pay for it dearly..."

3) If IBM would spread out the costs over all OS purchases, it would be a very small bump. Instead, they are surprised when fewer than expected are successful in convincing management to spring for a cost they never had to pay for before. As a consultant, I can rarely walk into a shop where they have RDi. And if a few chosen programmers are allowed to have it it's usually considered a perk. Whether it makes sense or not is not the point. The point is that this cost model is make it more and more difficult for companies to stick w/ the i, let alone get new customers.

-mark

At 2/10/2011 11:17 AM, you wrote:
> If Rational sees a revenue stream from IBM i customers, that has to be a
> good thing versus us being an anonymous aggregate.
> --buck

It absolutely is a good thing to be able to point to specific revenue to
justify the costs of further enhancements on the RPG and COBOL tools for
the i.

Joe


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