RE: How many running what releases (was: sys/36 to as/400)

I think another thing that's going to hit the fan at COMMON will be a
lot of pi**ed off V3R6/7 users who had a quote for V4R1 from IBM, went
away, waited several months to get budget approval, and then found out
how much more they'll need for V4R2.   What will really stick in their
craw if the fact that IBM is now "giving away" the V4R2 LPP upgrades to
customers who had V4R1 running by February 27th, and they'll want to
know why THEY have to pay when others didn't !

I know a couple of customers putting in new AS/400's in the next month
or two who will be ordring them with V4R1 - same reason, they budgeted
for the new hardware & software, got it approved, and now they find it's
going to cost them another $20,000 or so if the machine ships with V4R2
because of the Licensed Program Products they'll have to pay more for.
So not only is this annoying current users upgrading to V4R2 from V3R6/7
- it's also screwing up new AS/400 customers who based their budgets on
the V4R1 software pricing.

I know how IBM must feel - not matter what you do you can't please
everyone.
I mean there are those (myself included) who DID install V4R1 before Feb
27th and are very pleased about this announcement, BUT I think
eventually IBM is going to have to give in on this and waive the V4R2
LPP upgrade charges for everyone.


Anyway, that's my opinion - of course I could be wrong.     :-)


Neil Palmer                                AS/400~~~~~      
NxTrend Technology - Canada   ____________          ___  ~     
Thornhill, Ontario,  Canada   |OOOOOOOOOO| ________  o|__||=   
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mailto:NPalmer@NxTrend.com    AS/400  The Ultimate Business Server      
http://www.NxTrend.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Al Barsa Jr. [SMTP:barsa2@ibm.net]
> Sent: Friday, March 20, 1998 6:42 AM
> To:   MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> Subject:      How many running what releases (was: sys/36 to as/400)
> 
> Hi,
> 
> The answer here is clearly that no one in the world, except possibly
> God
> knows.  Certainly IBM doesn't even know.  There are several problems
> and
> intricacies :
> 
> >> BTW, anyone have the installed customer count for the many flavors
> of
> AS/400
> >> and a possible breakout of which OS level they are at?
> 
> 1.    In it's infinite wisdom, when releases of OS/400 were free, IBM
> allowed
> IRs to produce PID media for their customers.  Even though the IR's
> were
> supposed to report what they shipped, there was no (real) enforcement.
> The
> IR program is (and has always been) out of control).
> 
> 2.    IBM's record keeping for the total number of releases they
> shipped
> pre-V3 should be accurate.  On the other hand, IBM's record keeping is
> less
> than stellar.  A good computer system might help.
> 
> Regardless to points 1 and 2 above, there is no guarantee that any
> customer
> who orders one of the 'free' releases ever has to install it!  (You
> can
> lead a horse to water, but ...)
> 
> 3.    Desite what I've said above, the use of the SPENDMONEY command
> isn't a
> bad indicator of customer intentions.  If you take the total nuber of
> AS/400's ever shipped, subtract out the number of black boxes shipped
> and
> then subtract the number of V3 upgrades shipped to ivory boxes, this
> might
> be a good indication of the number of V2 customers still around.  If
> IBM
> has this number, it would be a good indication of the number of pre-V3
> customers around.  Less of course the number of B10s that have been
> retired
> in pairs, and had an old door put on top of them to make a desk...,
> less
> the number of hot copies of V3 that got out because IBM dropped the
> ball on
> enforcement of licensed keys prior to V4R1.
> 
> None of this is to negate the fact that, that IBM does have a great
> deal of
> accurate data on what hardware they sold at what levels.  IBM keeps
> hardware sales data (using an AS/400), so there is a significantly
> higher
> probability of data stability than on other platforms used by the
> company.
> "B" systems can run anything from V1R1 to V3R2.  "C" systems (yes
> there
> were a few of them) required V1R1M2 or V2R2 (sorry - can't remember
> which).
>  "D" systems required V2R1. "E" systems required V2R2.  "F" systems
> required V2R3 (even the later models like F97).  Models 200 and 300
> required V3R0M5, because V3R1 was not stable when it came out (as I
> remember, someone at COMMON publicly stated that it "sucked", who was
> that), although certain feature codes for these CISC black systems
> required
> V3R1.  To my knowledge, there are no known hardware dependances on
> V3R2,
> but I could be wrong.
> 
> A clear point of delineation is RISC.  Models 400 and 500 required
> V3R6.
> There were probably some hardware dependances on V3R7, but I'm not
> sure.
> Models 600 et all required V4R1.   The new model 170 requires V4R2.
> 
> Crank all that IBM confidential hardware and software sales data into
> a
> model S40, and do some data mining with some hard work, and you might
> get
> some answers.  Has IBM done this data mining? -  unlikely.  They are
> too
> busy laying off people when they have a lousy third quarter, and then
> negating this fact when they make up for it in the fourth quarter.
> ("Is
> this anyway to run an airline?  You bet...")  [Forget it, you wouldn't
> remember those ads unless you are 45 or older.])
> 
> My best guess is that there are somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 V2
> systems left in the US and Canada (mostly at V2R3 - this negates the
> deskholder crowd - see above).  More in other countries.  Y2K hysteria
> end
> e-jump will help many of the V2R3 customers move to V3R2 and V4R2 this
> year.  If IBM had it on the ball, they would have announced e-jump for
> V3R0M5 and V3R1 at the same time a they announced it for V2R3, but
> instead
> they decided to send a signal to customers who invested in V3 that
> they
> made a bad investment. ("Where's the beef?"  [Another ad you wouldn't
> remember unless you were at least 25 or older.]] Hopefully this will
> be
> rectified by COMMON, or else Soundoff will be lot's of fun.
> 
> This is Al, on vacation in rainy cold Florida.
> 
> Al
> 
> PS:   TIA for all the MS '97 responses, I will deal with them when I
> get home
> next week.
> 
> 
> Al Barsa, Jr.
> Barsa Consulting, LLC.
> 
> 
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