Re: SSA GT Official Policies -- BPCS-L

Al Macintyre tried to follow the instructions but Al is not talented in that 
area.

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Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2000 14:53:46 EDT
Subject: Re: SSA GT Official Policies
To: kmiller@ssax.com
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I would be happy to receive any general information you are willing to share.

I am in no particular rush to get any specific answers at this time.

What I most want to hear is that SSA GT plans to continue pretty much the 
same policies & commitments of SSA & grow the BPCS product & service so that 
over time it will continue to improve, with early clear notification of any 
changes to traditional SSA policies. 

While I have agreed in principle with a sentiment expressed on BPCS_L that 
one of the challenges complicating SSA's life is the vast abundance of 
versions & platforms that you support, I am hoping that BPCS 405 CD will 
continue to be an official version, and that we will continue to have access 
to the source code.

<first big snip start>

I suggested & explained a market idea that might be profitable for SSA GT to 
pursue

<first big snip end>

I hope that in my open free wheeling discussion on BPCS_L & other internet 
forums of my understandings of the workings of BPCS, the problems that seem 
to me to be systemic, and so forth, that you have not found my words to be 
disrespectful to your company, which is very critical to the future of my 
employer. I am gravely disappointed that some of the traffic on BPCS_L has 
undermined your interest in participating there.

My full name is Alister William Macintyre
I usually go by the short version Al Macintyre

I handle a wide variety of AS/400 responsibilities managing BPCS 405 CD
at Central Industries of Indiana Inc
1325 East Virginia Street
Evansville In 47715

The web site http://www.cen-elec.com web master is Jason Waller.

The phone # there is 812-421-0231 with fax 812-424-6838
I usually work nites & sleep late in mornings so you can call me at home 
mid-day to early afternoon 

<second big snip just summarized here start>

my home phone # was given

I identified official representatives between Central & SSA GT

I gave some history of Central's involvement with using various versions of 
BPCS, and why V8 might be important for us to consider.  I explained how we 
got to BPCS 405 CD & why we seriously considered other ERP than SSA & why we 
decided to stick with SSA.  I talked about some fears & contingency plans.

I identified the nature of our current licenses with SSA

I explained where we were on count of how many users in our license & listed 
several areas of future concern that I have with respect to methods of 
identifying or counting how many users we really have.

I speculated on whether a future tie in to IBM License Management would be 
constructive.

I personally have several different sign-ons, for normal work, for security 
changes, for testing, and in fact several co-workers have the regular sign-on 
& the testing sign-on to automate connection to right library list, so a pure 
count of # users profiles is not a correct count of real people.

As we move into e-commerce, I believe that someone who accesses data like on 
our web site, via e-mail, EDI, or a variety of new methodologies. that is a 
derivative of BPCS data, without actually them actually using BPCS software 
or "touching" the BPCS data base, is akin to an employee at a customer who 
looks at an invoice or order acknowlegement ... they are using the data but 
should not "count" towards number of users in site license.  

I went into several variations of such notions, then suggested that what I 
think is needed as e-commerce evolves is to associate licensing & tech 
support offerings with the type of pipeline that delivers BPCS data out of a 
corporate system, irrespective of whether we are using software written by 
SSA or some other entity, much like support for an application module.

Bottom line here is that I recognize SSA GT makes the rules & I would like to 
see a periodic restatement of them, so that as we move into new areas, we 
know all the implications.

We are getting value from OSG & SSA Tech Support but our need has declined 
recently due to various constructive internal education efforts.

<second big snip end>

Alister William Macintyre 
Computer Data Janitor etc. of BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 on 400 model 170 OS4 V4R3 
(forerunner to IBM e-Server i-Series 400)  @ http://www.cen-elec.com Central 
Industries of Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and 
electrical sub-assemblies

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