RE: Business Partner bashing

10-4!

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-midrange-l@midrange.com [mailto:owner-midrange-l@midrange.com]On
Behalf Of Phil
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2001 10:49 AM
To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
Subject: RE: Business Partner bashing

This type of behavior isn't limited to BP's.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-midrange-l@midrange.com
> [mailto:owner-midrange-l@midrange.com]On Behalf Of Reeve Fritchman
> Sent: Monday, July 30, 2001 10:10 AM
> To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> Subject: RE: Business Partner bashing
>
>
> Tony, I'm a North American BP with an ERP application.  We are
> application-
> and product-oriented (because our product is far superior to our
> marketing).
> I take exception to your rose-colored glasses view of BP-dom.
>
> We put together a package of hardware and our software ($100k+)
> and present
> competitive packages to our customers located throughout the U.S. and
> Canada.  But it's not unusual for a local BP sales-type to come
> in and sell
> the system we configured with a toilet-paper inventory system
> ($2K) as their
> value-add.  The customer wants to save bucks...who'd blame him?
> Meanwhile,
> we've done the work for the hardware and get no hardware credit.  The BP's
> talk about providing free training and support, but once the machine's
> installed, they make Gary Condit and Chandra Levy look like publicity
> freaks.
>
> Yes, there are iSeries business partners out there who know
> nothing; they're
> calling all the time and trying to chisel a piece of our business because
> they're "local".  There are business partners and local IBM managers who
> collude to exclude out-of-area vendors.  Like it or not, IBM does
> not police
> BP's: all IBM wants is to sell big boxes with lots of IBM software
> preloaded.
>
> I use BP's for components of our application and for handling network and
> configuration issues; I'm happy to give them the business.  But there are
> plenty of weasels out there, and I think Don's literal emphasis on
> "well-policed" is appropriate.
>
> If your outfit behaves according to IBM's guidelines, I look forward to
> working with you in the future.
>
> Reeve Fritchman
> Chairman, Transportation Technology Group, Inc.
> 4915 S. Westshore Boulevard
> Tampa, Florida  33611
> reeve@transtechgroup.com (e-mail)
> 813-831-8574 (voice)
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-midrange-l@midrange.com
> [mailto:owner-midrange-l@midrange.com]On
> Behalf Of tawbrey@ascend-tech.com
> Sent: Monday, July 30, 2001 9:03 AM
> To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> Subject: Business Partner bashing
>
>
> Don,
>
> I am curious why you feel it necessary to bash all IBM business
> partners in
> this  forum all the time. Do you truly feel that most BP's are not
> knowledgeable and loyal to their customer base? I am sure there are some
> that are not, but the vast majority are and will continue to be committed
> to their customers.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tony Awbrey
> Technical Specialist
>
> IBM Certified Specialist --
>      iSeries Technical Solutions Design V4R5
>      iSeries Solution Sales V4R5
>      Domino for AS/400
>
> Ascend Technologies, Inc.
> 2658 Crosspark Rd. Suite 200
> Coralville, IA 52241
> Voice: 319.626.5490 ext. 825
> Fax:     319.626.5491
>
>
>
>                     Don
>                     <dr2@cssas400.com>        To:
> MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
>                     Sent by:                  cc:
>                     owner-midrange-l@mi       Subject:     Re: IBM getting
> rid of RPG
>                     drange.com
>
>
>                     07/28/2001 05:03 PM
>                     Please respond to
>                     MIDRANGE-L
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Rewrite?  NAH, they'd wing some conversion tool at us and give us a few
> months to convert before pulling out the rug...:)
>
> And, then, there's ALWAYS those incredibly knowledgeable, loyal to the
> user, WELL POLICED BY IBM and impecibley credible "business
> partners"........
>
>
>
> On Sat, 28 Jul 2001, John Rockwell wrote:
>
> > One of the problems where this penalty comes into play involves a large
> number of
> > programs built to provide us with an Executive Information System.  It
> would take
> > a significant amount of time to rewrite those programs just to get back
> to where
> > we were when we started from a presentation point of view, time that
> management
> > may not feel too pleased about providing us with.  This system
> is written
> > entirely in RPG and displays various business trends in offsetting
> colored bar
> > graphs.  Its used to encourage peer-to-peer management (competition)
> among
> > multiple plants instead of making the plant managers respond to
> seemingly
> > arbitary directives handed down from above (it gets rid of the  'you
> don't live
> > in the real world' arguments because they're competing against
> people who
> live in
> > the same world that they do).  There's also a drill-down function built
> into the
> > bars on all of the graphs so people can see where the numbers came from.
> > Re-writing code for file maintenance programs will be considerably
> easier.
> >
> >
> > Joe Pluta wrote:
> >
> > > There are ways around the interactive tax.  In fact, I'll be doing a
> seminar
> > > on exactly that topic at COMMON.  The basic idea is to modify your
> programs
> > > to run in batch and talk to a data queue instead of a display file.
> Once
> > > you do that, you can pretty quickly attach a user interface, either
> thick
> > > client or thin.  A thick client can be written in VB or Java, or you
> can use
> > > a servlet engine such as WebSphere or Tomcat to run your applications
> via a
> > > browser.  It's fast, powerful, flexible and relatively painless.
> > >
> > > This way, your primary business logic is still written in RPG, which I
> > > contend is the best language for defining business rules in the
> business,
> > > primarily because of its tight integration with the database.  And,
> once
> > > you've started separating your business logic from your presentation,
> you
> > > can start looking at moving towards a true client/server architecture,
> which
> > > is where I believe the iSeries will truly outpace any other platform.
> > >
> > > Joe
> > >
> > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > From: owner-midrange-l@midrange.com
> > > > [mailto:owner-midrange-l@midrange.com]On Behalf Of William A Pack
> > > > Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2001 11:09 AM
> > > > To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> > > > Subject: IBM getting rid of RPG
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >       I liked Mr. Rockwell's comments.  IBM is trying everything
> > > > to get people to
> > > > abandon current applications and migrate to something they want to
> sell,
> > > > like Java or Domino.  They are good alternatives for new apps,
> > > > but if I have
> > > > a business running for 5-10 years on good software, why should I
> > > > change just
> > > > because IBM wants me to?  IBM is going to piss off quite a few
> customers,
> > > > who will remember the favor that IBM did them by jacking up the cost
> of
> > > > interactive workload.  If they have to change applications, my
> > > > guess is they
> > > > will be implemented on a cluster of Wintel boxes, just to return the
> favor
> > > > to IBM.  I really want to now the technical reasons IBM has for
> costing on
> > > > interactive features.  They claim it is harder to do 5250 now that 3
> years
> > > > ago.  Why?
> > > >       The System 3/x family was sold as a programmerless systems.
> > > >  The AS/400 was
> > > > sold as a system that will maintain investment in applications
> > > > and business
> > > > practices.  Now, the only thing that sets the 400 apart from the sea
> of
> > > > Intel based clones is the single manufacturer.   Looks like the
> future
> > > > belongs to Wintel and C#.
> > >
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