Re: Java and the AS/400

** Reply to note from DAsmussen@aol.com Sun, 23 Nov 1997 19:54:34 -0500 (EST)

[snip]

> I don't really know.  IBM kept their ineffective Warp ads on far longer than
> was necessary, and I view the Dennis Leary "e-business" ads in the same vein.
>  Where the _HECK_ is the product?  What does it do?  Under the old journalism
> edit "Who, What, When, Where, and Why?", the "what" is always missing, the
> "when" is etherial, and the "why" is often missing or so shortly represented
> that everyone misses it.  The ads seem to promote only IBM's services -- are
> they going to drop hardware entirely in favor of this new "revenue stream"?

Well, there might be something to this. Not that IBM would drop any division
that was still making money, but that IBM services makes a great margin AND
helps to sell hardware. 

But I think that what we are looking at is probably a result of the rest of
what we have been talking about. IBM advertises a solution to eBusiness. Of
course, the solution is going to be different for every possible business
case, so they can't really just put some generic solution up. But what they
do is represent people that don't really have answers but are working on the
problem within a company. Then they say, "There is an alternative, because
IBM actually does this sort of thing."

Now who do you suppose those people are who are bungling along? Do you
suppose that over the last 15 years or so upper management has sort of gained
this perspective of MIS as a group that doesn't really have answers? 

I suppose that if I owned a company, about the third or fourth time someone
told me this new (fill in the blank) was the silver bullet for all my
computing woes, I'd start to wonder if they new what they were doing. When
this looks like the majority of the computing professionals (and I base this
on the number of NT/Novell/Banyan/etc. solutions likely to be recommended
over time) maybe there gets to be a perception that upper management needs to
go out of house to look for solutions. 

Also consider that a large number of web sites have been put up on the net
without turning a dollar in revenue. Perhaps IBM hopes to capitalize on this
by point out that fancy pages and flashy logos aren't what they are talking
about when they say eBusiness. After all, that's a problem for IBM too. If
business owners feel like all there is to the web is animated graphics they
may be hesitant to dump money into a web site.

> But the users are irrelevant from an advertising perspective, except in small
> companies.  The only way to prove reliability to a user is to install an
> AS/400, and only management can dictate _THAT_!

Oh, I agree with you for the most part. Users will seldom influence
purchasing. But sometimes they will. For instance, at one company I worked
for we hired an employee away from another company. She was to manage the
area responsible for room reservations. She worked with a programmer to
outline what sort of things she needed from the software (he was writing) to
do business. 

Demands on the programmer's time were very high. The question came up often
as to whether or not we could just buy a package that would suit her needs.
Unfortunately, all she could remember was the package she had been using ran
on Windows. Now, I don't know if it really did or she telneted to a Unix box
and ran something (I learned that they had a Unix server) or what. But there
are some cases where selling a user can be a benefit. 

But is it enough to be worth ad dollars? I don't think so. 

> I've spoken to this on _numerous_ occasions.  They should be seeing that
> local community colleges and universities have an AS/400 curriculum.  IBM
> should assure that said curriculums are valid for the current hardware and
> software.  IBM should encourage local businesses to get involved with these
> curriculums.  Where possible, IBM should drop down to the high school level
> with their education programs.  Nike and Adidas do it for sports, why not IBM
> for the intelligencia?  Heck, I learned the S/3 Model 10 in High School!

Well, IBM does give away and/or subsidize computing in schools. I am sure
more of that would help. 

> Dean Asmussen
 

Chris Rehm
Mr.AS400@ibm.net

How often can you afford to be unexpectedly out of business?
Get an AS/400.
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