Re: IBM Secret (Was Copy to New AS400 via TCP)

Jon,

In a message dated 5/10/99 11:40:31 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
Jon.Paris@halinfo.it writes:

<<snip>>
> The last line here raises an interesting point.  The problem of staffing is
>  _not_ an AS/400 issue anymore - it is an industry wide problem.  IT is not 
> sexy right now, so we need to expand our recruitment efforts.
>  
>  It saddens me that a platform that was founded on the notion of training
>  Accountants and others in how to program (Al does that ring a bell ?) is 
now
>  trailing other areas in the industry in terms of dealing with staff 
shortages by
>  recruiting and training their own people.

Sad, but true.  Unfortunately, the AS/400 suffers further from being 
perceived as "uncool among the uncool".  This makes absolutely no sense, 
given that AS/400 salaries in general outstrip those of all its UNIX and PC 
counterparts.  EBCDIC maybe?  I just don't know.

The funny thing about your comment is that teaching accountants to program, 
poor marketing of the platform, and the system's resemblance to my former 
platform is how I ended up on the /400 in the first place.  I worked for 
years on a Qantel system, from which you could take a program from the first 
system built in 1969 and load it on the newest model in the eighties and it 
would run without recompiling.  I taught several classes in Report Generator 
(Qantel's Query equivalent) and programming -- mostly to Controllers and 
CFO's.  Well the next thing ya' know, old Jed's got no work.  Why call me 
when the customer can perform simple modifications (like modifying forms or 
building small applications) on their own?  The only way to make money was to 
sell more systems, but Qantel's marketing was so poor (most _business_ people 
don't give a hoot that you're running the back office of most NFL, NBA, and 
NHL teams, which was the advertising focus) that selling more systems was out 
of the question during the "proprietary wars".  This is why I bitch at IBM 
about the marketing of the AS/400 -- I'd hate to see another great system die 
from manufacturer neglect...

JMHO,

Dean Asmussen
Enterprise Systems Consulting, Inc.
Fuquay-Varina, NC  USA
E-mail:  DAsmussen@aol.com

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in 
practice, there is." -- Anonymous  (thanks to Gary Kuznitz, though!)
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