Re: Midrange Computing is liquidating.

John,
You are right on the money. In addition to what you mention, IBM
takes great pains that the name "iSeries" does not appear on any
green screen (AS/400 has been replaced by OS/400 on the main
menu in V5R1). Now there is nothing wrong per se about this,
AS LONG AS WE ALL UNDERSTAND WAS IS GOING ON.

----- Original Message -----
From: John Rockwell <midson@earthlink.net>
To: <MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com>
Sent: Friday, July 27, 2001 11:36 PM
Subject: Re: Midrange Computing is liquidating.


> Here's a thought.  What if IBM thinks the only way the iSeries can survive
is by
> getting rid of RPG?  The thinking would go something like this.
>
>    1. Customers are tied to their legacy applications by the programs
they've
> grown accustomed to.
>
>    2. These legacy applications taint the iSeries when it's competing
against the
> latest technologies because competitors dismiss
>        them as old green screen applications.
>
>    3. Most of these green screen applications are in RPG and a lot of the
more
> valuable ones are interactive in nature.
>
>    4. Now what happens if we suddenly make a seemingly unrelated marketing
> change, breaking the pricing of the AS400 into
>        two separate features, batch and interactive, and then charge a
fortune
> for the interactive segment.  And let's make it even
>        more interesting by tuning CFINT so it really does succeed as a
governor
> when you move to versions 4.5.
>
>    5. How long will it take for RPG and the high price of the interactive
feature
> to be linked together, making new technologies
>        like Domino, JAVA, et al, more appealing because they conveniently
run in
> batch as far as the AS400 is concerned (even
>        though this changes the definition of batch a bit)?  Thus through a
little
> sleight of hand the argument changes from language
>        vs. language (with a company usually having to rely on its own
in-house
> programmers judgment) to an argument simply
>        over dollars (with a company having more than enough accountants to
make a
> case against the legacy).
>
> Just thinking out loud of course.  It also makes me wonder about the
requirement
> that you have to move to 4.5 (where the governor works very well) to get to
an
> 820 box.  Some weekend when no ones on the system I'm going to start a
bunch of
> interactive jobs, set them to 0 priority, and see if they can give the
governor a
> run for its money.  (Of course I won't change the class priority value in
case I
> have to re-IPL to get QINTER functioning again.)
>
> Jim Franz wrote:
> > IBM! and the iSeries division still "made" money. The rumors of our
demise
> > are greatly exaggerated.

> > From: "Leif Svalgaard" <leif@leif.org>
> > Subject: Re: Midrange Computing is liquidating.
> > > the good news is that IBM apparently foresee a
> > > *SLOW* demise of the platform. Extrapolating their own
> > > figures show a 1.5% decline per year. since the
> > > fraction of IBM's revenue resulting from the AS/400 now
> > > stands at about 10%, you can do the arithmetic.

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