RE: New iSeries Purchases ? "Family loyalty"; IBM's big mistake (IMHO) -- MIDRANGE-L

My leg is broken and my butt is sore: my application is iSeries only and I'm
weary of kicking myself.

I'm not trashing ISV's; I am one.  ISV's won't develop apps on a platform
teetering on the edge of oblivion (why else no marketing?) and they won't
develop apps without good AD and OS technology.

We have great tools like CGIDEV2; official IBM says, "Not interested" to
functions that should be native in OS/400.  WebFacing?  Interesting, but
only a little better than a short-term solution.  Joe Pluta, Nathan Andelin,
et al. have tools and opinions (not necessarily in that order :)) which
appear to be interesting, innovative, and practical; there's plenty of "5250
replacement" vaporware out there (something to do with patents, I think).
We need native development tools, wizards, etc., so we can generate
good-looking and functional applications.

Okay: IBM has a lock on the OS and hardware side.  Toronto is working hard
on AD tools; my vote is for simplicity and ease of use rather than for
figure-out-and-display-the-LaGrange-point-without-using-CFINT complexity
(flatten the learning curve).  If we want applications to displace PC's, we
need to provide the same tools and interfaces available on a PC without
going through layers of software and 3rd party vendors.  The iSeries
penetration into the PC world will remain stalled until I can run my
complementary PC applications on the same box, access the data with ease,
and develop as quickly and as cheaply as I can with a 5250 interface (even
considering the differences in functionality).

I maintain iSeries marketing is completely disorganized; IBM's tried to "Tom
Sawyer" the hardware sales effort of the iSeries off on the ISV's.  If you
have sit-behind-a-desk sales force, you'll have a problem.  But there was a
time when IBM marketing reps met face-to-face with customers and sold by
using cost justification; the best reps had teams of resources (ISV's)
behind them and sold bunches of systems.

Hardware commissions have been a real Pandora's box because the "value add"
concept was never enforced by IBM.  IBM says one thing and does another; the
ISV with the investment in the software development gets hammered by the
hardware-only guy offering a water-cooler inventory program as a value add.
ISV's get commissions but IBM vanishes from the marketing front.  Of course
IBM figured it was cheaper to pay commissions than reps; soon they won't be
paying commissions either.

The seeds that need to be planted aren't Domino, Linux, PASE, and WebSphere.
Those items are opportunistic and will grow on their own when the classic
application environment is nurtured.  Customers choose applications first
and then hardware second?  No, they don't: they consider the total cost of
ownership and evaluate it against the return on that investment.  Sometimes
there are forces pushing for or against a hardware solution; this translates
into a component of the cost justification.

As to iSeries "not running RPG", surely you mean they're running COBOL?  If
the iSeries was really successful in non-RPG applications, IBM would buy 10
minutes of SuperBowl half-time advertising.  Sure, the FAA is using a couple
of iSeries boxes for e-mail...BFD, even a blind pig finds an acorn.  When
the FAA uses the iSeries to manage ATC, we're talking a serious application!
I don't think IBM has made an inroad into the non-RPG (what is it...Domino?)
environment, not that the system won't do it, but because there's no
critical mass of applications, knowledge, and marketing.

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-admin@midrange.com [mailto:midrange-l-admin@midrange.com]On
Behalf Of Jim Franz
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2002 3:32 PM
To: midrange-l@midrange.com
Subject: Re: New iSeries Purchases ? "Family loyalty"; IBM's big mistake
(IMHO)

> It seems that Rochester is still planting new trees.  Not many outside
their
> own forest.  And not many seedlings.  That is a pity.  It leads to
haunting
> in the forest.
>
i would consider linux, domino, pase, and even websphere "outside".
and i think there is more success there than we can see.
the $625million in 4Q is not "all" existing accounts
As ibm'rs have said for a while - "a lot of people buy the box and NEVER
run rpg". How do we know that is not happening?
Besides, if you want to kick someone, kick the software vendors for
not pushing their software on the iSeries.
jim


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