Re: Computerworld: Scarcity of AS/400 resources a concern -- MIDRANGE-L

James !

Glad I could get you fired up buddy ! <BG>

Ya, that line Ling spewed REALLY took me by surprise - WHERE the heck did he get
THAT from ?? !!

And ditto on the applications - we have heard for YEARS of the incredible 
breadth
of applications for the AS/400...

Glad the S/36 deal went well ! We just moved off of an OLD NCR Unix box to the
AS/400 for Y2K compliance and had VERY little problems. Maybe IBM or at least
Ling needs to be talking to the RIGHT folks !!

Chuck

James W Kilgore wrote:

> Thanks for the "heads up" on the article.
>
> IMHO, Walt Ling is singing the company song.  As a former BP, (did I
> stress former?) being told to sell the sizzle instead of the steak was
> when I made a business decision to split sheets.  New applications
> -require- JAVA/NT/UNIX? Give me a break.
>
> But in spite of all of the "concerns" stated in the article, a 10%
> growth, by any measure, is very respectable.
>
> BTW, I'm confident that Progressive Data Systems in not the only Y2K
> compliant MRP application vendor on the planet! :-)
>
> To top it all off 47k isn't that much to ask in this profession.  AP
> clerks get 40k and can't even balance their own check book!
>
> Personally, I take such articles with a grain of salt.  "Concerns" make
> headlines, success rarely does.
>
> To balance this article, I've just spent the past week and a half
> upgrading a 5363 user to a 150.  First we tossed in our Y2K compliant
> version of AP. GL. PR and JC for a highway paving company.  Layered on
> top of that their customized S/36 code, did some tweaking and sure
> enough pay checks were out on time today.
>
> Our biggest problem has been getting Netwolf and win95 to cope with
> pitch and nonspooled print.  IMHO, never, never, never spool checks.
> The "best" deadline was noon, the panic point was 3PM, it all came
> together by 2PM.
>
> What took 35 minutes (pay check calculation) on the 5363 only took 5
> minutes on the 150 which took a huge load off of the test/repeat cycle.
>
> This client is my company's smallest installation.  They started with a
> 5364 in 1986.  We chose to do business with them because they
> represented a market segment that we were after. (5-10M/yr sales, one
> man-year HW/SW)
>
> When they learned that their 5363 could never be Y2K compliant they
> shopped around for alternatives to their business needs.  They looked
> into Walt Ling's JAVA/NT/UNIX offerings and found them ALL lacking. Sort
> of like S/38 offerings in 1982.  Oh, sure, ported S/34 code or a few
> pioneers.
>
> They made a choice to evolve to the AS/400, purely on the readily
> available application migration that solved their business needs.
>
> It was not a platform decision, it was a results decision.
>
> Fortunately for IBM, Progressive Data Systems happened to provide the
> results via AS/400. (this time)
>
> By 2002, when JAVA either grows up or eats dust, we'll make the mega
> buck commitment to -any- platform that supports our pure JAVA product
> and IBM may or may not win.
>
> Having said that, I will concede that, although Big Blue may enter late
> in the game, when they do, a standard is set that all others follow.
> Can we spell VM? How about PC?
>
> Don't get me wrong, PDS has been true Blue for over 20 years and in
> spite of any rants I may go off on, I still have a high confidence that
> IBM will continue to provide rock solid foundations for application
> developers.
>
> Thanks for bearing with me,
> James W. Kilgore
> email@James-W-Kilgore.com
>
> P.S. As a former BP, the jumping of hoops, ass kissing, sucking up,
> whatever, did not further my company's goal of customer satisfaction.
> The mere comment that JAVA/NT/UNIX as -THE- Walt/IBM solution is just
> another marketing game that ignores the business consumer need to solve
> a problem and spends to much energy on the method instead of the
> results. (sizzle vs steak)
>
> Sorry, I got off on another rant.
>
> Chuck Lewis wrote:
> >
> > Check it out online, per Computerworld !
> >
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