Re: Future of 5250 and other interesting topics.

HI Ken,

I tend to agree with you. Some of us discussed this about 4 or 5 years ago, 
where
we saw the AS/400 with a future of being treated as a high-end data repository!
What saddens me is the fact that this discussion was with a bunch of M$ bigots. 
It
seems, with the 'peripheral' development going on around the iSeries, that this
may be true.

It may be argued that perception is a bitch, but the perception out there in the
customer base (over here by us, in any case) is that the following is true:
a.)    cost of dev tools on the lower end platforms is cheaper
b.)    skills availability is greater on the lower end platforms (cost of dev,
maintenance, etc), as they seem a dime a dozen
c.)    if I HAVE to change from my legacy apps to c/s apps, why not offset dev
costs against a cheaper platforms? # see note

Over here the BP's basically have to punt the iSeries products and
employ/develop/train incumbents in order to support the customers enlightened
enough to purchase the relevant product. If the product don't gain some degree 
of
critical mass, why spend the funds to train anyone? This may be short sighted, 
but
true when one considers that most post sales revenue is support services (if you
are not a development shop). If there aren't enough installations, why invest?
Once again, this is in IBM's court!

<#note>
One often sees that decision makers consider themselves to more on secondment 
than
employment! This is evident in the fact that decisions are made with short to
medium term goals in mind (time frames are debatable, in view of the lifecycle 
of
technology!). When the cost of the iSeries is evaluated, items such as TCO,ROI,
cost per transaction and others, these are often disregarded. I have, too often,
seen and heard of customers leaving the AS/400 paltform, only to still be 
running
it 6 to 12 months after the published cut-off date, with increased support 
staff,
costs, etc.
</#note>

I know that the thread regarding CFINT has been killed in this forum, but I just
want to mention some things:
I think most customers are p'd off regarding this issue AFTER implementation. I
have too often seen sales people selling the customer short on performance, only
so that the price is attractive and that they can get the sale. It is once 
again a
case of throwing money at the problem in order to buy it right. Many customers
rely on the the sales person to advise them in terms of the technology that they
should invest in. They sometimes (or often) are not on par with where things (in
terms of the iSeries) are going. Hence the fact that they blame IBM, when the
sales person has not been 110% honest with them.

Punch line? The iSeries is innocent, IBM is open to criticism and the
customer-facing reps are often the culprits!

Cheers.

Jan Megannon
Memetic Systems
'It is easy to spot the winners, they are the ones not complaining about the 
rule'
- Sean Fitzpatrick, New Zealand Rugby Captain.


ken shields wrote:

>         Jan, give it a few more years, the way things are going, i would not 
>be
> at all surprised to see a return.
>         Next time around it will be called a 0525 thin client, that, because 
>it
> does 'client server' work, and the main files are all on the
> server....stay with me....only has a floppy drive, for downloading some
> data for MS back-office
> blah, blah,blah
>
> Jan Megannon wrote:
> >
> > I have been following with interest the discussions on this list, having
> > newly subscribed.
> >
> > Regarding the pending(?) demise of 5250 and the 'dumb' terminal or
> > green-screen :- it will be a pity to see it go, as I always believed
> > that one should never put any thing more intelligent on the desktop than
> > that which is sitting behind the keyboard. Just a thought!
> >
> > Cheers.
> >
> > Jan Megannon.
> > Memetics Systems.
> > South Africa.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> --
> Best Regards
> Ken Shields
> Home phone: 905 404-2062
> Bus  phone  905 725-1144 (326)
> _______________________________________________
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