RE: conspirators at IBM

I asked an industry insider who's knowledgeable and been in the business
about as long as there have been computers about the proposition last week
that there was a conspiracy to keep mainframe ERP systems out of the public
eye.  This was in response to the fact that BPCS was missing from the APICS
soft-ware survey.  Although he prefers to remain anonymous I have copied his
reply below. 
        > Naw, there's no conspiracy.   What you're seeing is the market
doing
        > it's thing.
        >
        > Think of how the whole thing evolved.  PC's were not network based
        > machines when they originated, so who cared about
        > security.  Bill concentrated on things like backwards
compatibility and
        > performance.   He did a good job marketing, so
        > now he has the biggest market share  (not to mention using some
        > not-so-legal marketing tactics - but that's a separate
        > discussion.)
        >
        > So now that everyone is wiring PCs together, it's becoming evident
that
        > security is nonexistant.  So, it's not a conspiracy -
        > Bill just wants to redirect everyone's attention while he's fixing
the
        > problem:
        > Q: "Mr Gates, are PC's running Microsoft secure?"
        > A: "We have the widest range of software running on the Microsoft
        > platform than any other platform."
        > Q: "But is it secure?"
        > A: "In addition, the price-performance of PC's are 4x better than
        > mainframe and UNIX boxes."
        > Q: "Please answer the question about security>"
        > A: "Well, we have more engineers working on security than the
nearest 3
        > competitors combined.."
        > Q: "But your current security?"
        > ....
        > ...
        >
        > IBM is just irritated because they can't market worth squat.  Any
techie
        > knows that IBM products are generally better
*       than Microsoft, but the general public doesn't have a clue
*       
Mitch Damon, CPIM
Planning Systems Manager
Agrilink Foods, Rochester NY
(716) 757-9328

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