RE: More anti-midrange propaganda

> From: James W. Kilgore
> 
> > I don't know about that.  SSA made a ton of money selling BPCS, and
so
> > did a number of other companies.  Why did they manage?
> 
> Services contracts? ;)Yes indeed!

<grin> You're not wrong, James.  I'm trying to activate brain cells long
rusted, but I seem to recall that a typical contract was around 50/50 in
product and services.

What we sold was essentially a framework, upon which we built the
software solution.  My guess is that this model is less viable today
because we're in the midst of a cycle where people think they can buy
off-the-rack solutions.

Unfortunately, we as consultants don't provide enough value-add to make
our costs reasonable.  But the funny thing is that services is the area
where companies LEAST want to spend money, and this is going to hit
services harder than anything.  Thus, anybody moving to a pure services
model is sort of like someone betting the boat on horse training when
everybody's driving cars, unless they plan on farming everything out to
Bangalore.

And if that's the model IBM is moving towards, as a stockholder I'd be
screaming "STOP IT RIGHT THERE!".

Joe