Some healthy skepticism there, Buck.
I think IBM will work on doing what it thinks is right. But marketing
will only accomplish so much. I hope the iNation project is a wild success,
but for it to be you are very right. We must "take up arms."
That doesn't mean that we are responsible for printing up fliers and
posting them on windshields or something. It does mean that AS/400 experts
have got to be more willing to embrace new technologies and use them to show
off the strengths of the AS/400.
A few years ago on this list, when I talked about the need to do things
like learn Java, I collected an esock full of emails about how it was just
the "flavor of the week" and we should just "wait and see" etc. This is the
nature of the AS/400 installed base.
See, the same thing that makes a guy wait a year to permanently install
his PTFs is the opposite of what has been expanding in the industry.
Example: NT. When NT was springing into the marketplace, it had a reliability
rating of 96% (3.1) to 99% (4.x) while the AS/400 ran along with %99.9. With
NT at its best, the AS/400 was still 10 times more reliable. But in a product
demo, which one worked better? Would you want to be the sales rep in there
demoing green screens vs. MS Office? Of course, we all got our chuckles when
NT locked up during very public demonstrations and when people would crash
SQL Server as part of their product demonstration at COMDEX.
Is the solution for us to stuff every new technology into OS/400 and
spit it into the market. Well, yes and no. Al is sort of griping about V5R1.
I remember the exact same complaints from him about V4R1. Actually, I was
thinking the other day that he seemed to feel exactly the same about the
two releases. "Don't install them unless you have a business need to do so."
Really, that is pretty much the AS/400 credo, isn't it? But that is Al just
doing the best job he can for his customers. That mentality has been a part
of the design of the AS/400 since its inception. The problem is, how to balance
that with a marketplace that seems to want the latest, flashiest gadget?
IBM has to accelerate the speed at which new technologies are deployed
in the AS/400 marketplace. To do so, they have to get _us_ to actually use
those technologies.
Do you remember when there were NO AS/400 based web sites? How big of
an ad would IBM have to print to make someone buy an AS/400 for their eCommerce
when they can go look at a Cold Fusion/SQL based web site and all IBM can
show them is green screens?
I know the AS/400 is the best machine in the marketplace. Didn't we all
know it since before "Silverlake" was even announced? Because it was based
on rock solid technologies that we could deploy in our business and still
go home on the weekend with peace in our hearts. The S/38 and S/36 were bullet
proof and IBM built on that. But the market changed.
Bottom line is, alternate technologies are becoming more reliable every
day. Someday they may even be as reliable as the machine we all love. If
the AS/400 is to take its place in the market place, it has to _be_ the
iSeries with wonderful technologies deployed from every pore. But if nobody
will write that code, and no iSeries company has a web site that is superior
in every way to the competition, who will buy it?
Buck Calabro wrote:
A1767D18AF09D511B99A00508B55A9FA1DB32D@COMMSOFT-EXCHG">I am probably out of line here, but being in my "late youth" has made me a
bit skeptical.
Waiting for IBM to organise iNation seems terribly like waiting for my
employer to send me off to Java school, Database school, Security school,
Computer science school, give me a raise AND my choice of brand new
development projects.
Why not stand up for ourselves and tell IBM what we want? And tell the
world too, while we're at it?
Waiting for IBM (or my employer!) just hasn't worked that well in the past.
Maybe my recent reading of Hamlet has got to me, but in order to continue to
exist, "to BE", I feel we should "take arms against a sea of troubles, and
by opposing; end them."
Buck Calabro
Commsoft; Albany, NY
Visit the Midrange archives and FAQ at http://www.midr!
ange.com
"To arms!" -- Patrick Henry, American Revolutionary war hero.
--
Chris Rehm
midrange.com
