Re: The age old question:

What are you talking about? The SMB market is definitely NOT dead. Haven't 
you seen the new IBM ads directed at this market? Best of all, the ads 
don't talk about a specific machine. They're focused on solutions. Last 
Thursday in USA Today was a big story about how IBM is battling it out 
with M$, and the article gave IBM better marks than it did M$ in a bunch 
of areas.


Paul Nelson
Arbor Solutions, Inc.
708-670-6978  Cell
pnelson@xxxxxxxxxx

"Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of 
others are often stiffened." ~~ Billy Graham




Pat Barber <mboceanside@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
12/18/2003 06:38 PM
Please respond to Midrange Systems Technical Discussion

 
        To:     Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
        cc: 
        Subject:        Re: The age old question:


Since IBM has forsaken the small business market place,
I don't think there is much in the way of "white papers"
and that sort of thing that "used" to be available.

I have seen any number of papers detailing the cost and
training required to convert from the 400 to NT. These
were done by two or three companies hired by IBM to hammer
on the NT solutions. (All my old links are "dead")

I don't think IBM even considers an "account" anything under
$100,000 so that makes your case very typical, another account
bites the dust and nobody cares.

Don't you wonder how many older systems left the fold simply
cause nobody bothered to ask them to stay ???

There isn't anybody even selling to the small accounts any longer.
When IBM whacked the BP program a couple of years back, that was
the final straw for small business accounts.

This will lead to the demise of the system as we know it today.
I think the systems will continue on, but they will only be known
in the larger accounts. The small accounts will finally throw up
their hands and say adios to IBM.


rick.baird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> situation:  A friend of mine works for a small business where they've 
had
> an iseries running the business for quite a while, but the owner is
> considering converting to an NT based system (for no good reason, IMO).
> 
> they are on V4R5 (they still use Officevision for a couple very 
important
> things), and IBM won't continue to support them unless they upgrade.
> 
> some of thier current processes need to be modernized, (credit card
> processing via modem, OV, things like that), and they've been burned by
> consultants in the past and are gun shy.
> 
> the decision on conversion has been put off for a year, and they're 
looking
> for options.   They don't want to commit to the cash to upgrade the
> iseries, replace OV, etc, if they're going to go with the NT package.
> 
> My friend, rightly, is trying to convince them to stick with the iseries 
-
> The system they use now is a heavily modified rpg package, and is now 
very
> specific to thier line of work and would be difficult to replace with 
any
> package, iseries, NT or anything else.   But it is a bit unwealdy, and 
the
> perception of course is that it's old fashioned.  She needs ammo to back 
up
> her advice.
> 
> I know this has been asked and answered, a thousand times, ad-nauseum, 
but
> I've spent a while searching the archives and am not coming up with 
exactly
> what I was looking for.
> 
> I remember a thread or even a single post or web page that put the
> pros-cons together succinctly on the NT vs. iseries.   anyone remember 
it
> and have it bookmarked?


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