RE: Thoughts on Enterprise Rent-a-car -- MIDRANGE-L

A local firm went from a hard-fought for $450,000 Annual Capital budget to 
a new CIO and a $4,000,000 Capital budget for the first year and figures 
close to that each year thereafter.  One complicated interactive user 
application went from 3 minutes per transactions to 3 transactions per 
hour. 

But how do you show this to a star-struck management?

_______________________
Booth Martin
Booth@MartinVT.com
http://www.MartinVT.com
_______________________




"Art Tostaine, Jr." <Art@link400.com>
Sent by: owner-midrange-l@midrange.com
06/21/2000 09:32 AM
Please respond to MIDRANGE-L

 
        To:     <MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com>
        cc: 
        Subject:        RE: Thoughts on Enterprise Rent-a-car

This is happening RIGHT NOW at a customer of mine.  All is true except 
they got sold before they got
a new CIO.

The CIO's goal was to get them on a more modern "NT" platform.  Before he 
was hired, and they were
using my code on the 400, they had NO inhouse staff.  Just my consulting 
firm doing AS/400 and
application support, and another guy running around hooking up PC's to 
talk to the 400 and run a UPS
manifesting system (written by him in Paradox)

The CIO gets hired to fix everything, now there are 9 people on staff, and 
not one new application
rolled out by them in 2 years.

They have a mighty slow TCP/IP WAN in place though.

Art Tostaine, Jr.
CCA, Inc.
Jackson, NJ 08527


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-midrange-l@midrange.com
[mailto:owner-midrange-l@midrange.com]On Behalf Of Wynn Osborne
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2000 12:13 AM
To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
Subject: Thoughts on Enterprise Rent-a-car


Is it a new CIO? CEO? COO?

In my somewhat limited time in this business, I've noticed the following
trend several times. Maybe it applies here.


A new dude is hired. The company thinks he's an operational God. His first
words are, "No wonder this company's having problems. The computer system
stinks!" "Damn, he's right.", utters the CEO. "Fix it!"

The dude consumes a few years making a comfortable living, implements his
bold new "5 year plan for turning the company around", fires a bunch of
people, installs new hardware & software, receives that big bonus, orders
new cherry wood furniture, and plays Mr. Politician for the remainder of
his tenure.

Then one day, the dude's current boss notices (usually at the end of a
business cycle, e.g., a recession), "Damn these IT guys sure cost us a lot
for damn little. We need a new CIO."

Thus begins iteration 2. Iteration 2 happens without notice because
Iteration 1 started so long ago that nobody on the payroll was around when
iteration 1 began.

The process repeats itself until either the company is bought by another
company, or the company goes out of business.

If the former occurs, the process again repeats itself, starting with
iteration 1. Why iteration 1 and not, say iteration 10? Because any such
iterations occurring before the company was sold are irrelevant, a.k.a.,
"Those idiots couldn't do anything right. We'll do it the right way."

If the latter occurs, the company had it coming anyway since the problem
never was with the computer system to begin with---it was the way they ran
the business.

Quite simple really :-)

Wynn




At 01:49 AM 6/21/00 GMT, you wrote:
>It has to be more than that.  Even AS/400 DASD is cheaper than throwing
>out an installed system.
>
>What will the software be?  Is it to be a ERP package?  Some new
>E-Application Suite that has been proven and tested for 15 or 20 years?
>_______________________
>Booth Martin
>Booth@MartinVT.com
>http://www.MartinVT.com
>_______________________
>
>
>
>
>"R. Bruce Hoffman, Jr." <rbruceh@attglobal.net>
>Sent by: owner-midrange-l@midrange.com
>06/20/2000 09:27 PM
>Please respond to MIDRANGE-L
>
>
>        To:     <MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com>
>        cc:
>        Subject:        Re: Enterprise Rent-a-car
>
>CHEAP DASD.
>
>
>
>===========================================================
>R. Bruce Hoffman, Jr.
> -- IBM Certified AS/400 Professional System Administrator
> -- IBM Certified AS/400 Professional Network Administrator
> -- IBM Certified Specialist - AS/400 Administrator
> -- IBM Certified Specialist - RPG IV Developer
>
>"If all you have is RPG, then everything looks like a 400!"
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Colin Williams <colin.williams@technocrats.co.uk>
>To: 'MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com' <MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com>
>Date: Tuesday, June 20, 2000 10:51 AM
>Subject: RE: Enterprise Rent-a-car
>
>
>>But what do they think they will be able to do  on the RS/6000, that
>>they can't currently do on the AS/400?
>>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Jim Oberholtzer [mailto:joberhol@compures.com]
>>Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2000 2:28 PM
>>To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
>>Subject: Re: Enterprise Rent-a-car
>>
>>
>>
>>Yup,  OUT with the 400 in with the 6000
>>
>>Why not?  IBM sells a boatload of new hardware, the AS/400 becomes less
>>viable by loosing its largest data center, and soon we can all go home,
>>Sounds like IBM New York got exactly what it wanted thanks to the tragic
>>box campaign.
>>
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