RE: DB and App Agnosticism on the iSeries

> From: Pete Helgren
> 
> Joe,
> 
> Thanks for the feedback.  I have been pondering your points here,
still
> digesting them, but have a few responses in the meantime:

I appreciate the comments, Pete.  The ethical points in particular are
my own personal beliefs, and I'll try to explain them as best I can.


> I am trying to see where the ethical sticking point is in the first
> comment about "selling somebody the best solution as opposed to
> simply making money off of whatever they choose to buy".  It is not
> what I want, it is what the customer wants.

I'm going to go WAY out on a tangent here, but bear with me.  If you
sold prescription cancer drugs and you found that there was a HUGE
market for Laetrile, even though it is proven ineffective and even
dangerous, would you still sell it because that's "what the customer
wants"?

I only bring up this relatively far-fetched example to indicate that
there are times when the customer may want something that's patently bad
for them.

Am I equating Windows to Laetrile?  Interesting question.  If you look
at it from the standpoint that the time and money wasted on Laetrile
might cause a patient to delay looking into a truly effective option,
then there is just enough parallel to stand scrutiny.  But I digress.


> It is the best
> solution FOR THEM and regardless of what I may think about their
> IQ levels when they choose someone else's solution, they chose the
> best solution for them.

I'll return to this statement in a moment.


> My job is to listen carefully to
> what they want and then present my solution as the best fit for their
> requirements. There is nothing unethical about having a flexible
enough
> product to fit variable requirements.

Here's where it gets interesting.  No, there's nothing unethical about
fitting variable requirements.  But if you have two products, one that
works well and one that works poorly if at all, is it ethical to sell
the inferior product?


> We provide "a solution" and, NO
> company has the "best" solution because that is what upgrades and
> enhancements are for, "bettering" the solution.  The "best solution"
is a
> constantly moving target because of changing organizational
requirements
> and changing technology.  It may be best today but tomorrow it is
passé.
> So the best solution is a mythical beast who's characteristics are
> transitory at best.  So all business transactions are closer to the
> "whatever they choose to buy" category and I don't see an ethical
> problem with selling solutions in that mode as long as everyone is
> fully informed.

This statement doesn't ring true, Pete.  There are good solutions and
bad solutions.  "Best" isn't the issue - good and bad is.  If the
solution is a good business decision for the customer, then great, but
as far as I can see, there just aren't a lot of good enterprise-level
Windows solutions.  And if the solution is inferior, then it really
isn't much of a solution is it?


> You'll get no argument from me that the iSeries is the most reliable,
> scalable, flexible, easy to manage server platform on the planet.  It
is
> the preferred platform in all cases.

And thus, by selling a Windows product, you are in effect selling an
inferior product because "that's what the customer wants".  This is the
ethical dilemma.


> Perhaps I am naïve, since I am not the on
> responsible for sales and marketing in the organization, but I
perceive
> that it is difficult to sell an iSeries into a WinTel shop (for
> example) because of the perception that the iSeries IS different
> than a WinTel box.  Maybe not.

Yes, that's true.  And it's even harder when iSeries vendors start
providing Windows versions of their solutions, and implying that the
Windows version is just as good as the iSeries version.  I'm not saying
you will do that, but there are lots of people who are.  And even if the
development side of the shop believes that, do you really know what the
sales people are saying?


> But I don't know how to reconcile the popularity of Windows and Linux
with
> the relative obscurity of the iSeries.

"Popularity" is perhaps not as precise a term as "ubiquity". Windows is
on nearly every desktop, so CEOs know about it.  But popular?  Go to a
shop trying to run a major application on Windows or Unix.  I'd say your
chances are just as good that you're going to hear curses as you are
accolades.  THEN go to a shop that was moved from an iSeries to Windows
or Unix.  Tell me what you hear.


> If the iSeries IS the "best
> solution", we are either pretty poor marketers and sales people, the
> general DP population has an average IQ below room temperature,
> or for "bad" reasons people continue to buy bad operating systems.

The iSeries is the most poorly marketed product on the planet, due to a
number of reasons (most of which stem from internal IBM politics).  And
despite NEVER being marketed, it is still quite popular, with some half
million machines sold.  That should tell you something.

As to the IQ issue (which you also brought up earlier and I said I'd
return to), it's not that IT people are dumb.  It's that decision making
has shifted from technically-aware IT managers to CEOs and CFOs who are
ill-informed and in many cases advised by people with agendas other than
the long-term health of the company.

And if you think I'm exaggerating, how many CEOs have presided over the
dismantling of a company and garnered huge bonuses based on "cost
cutting", then jumped ship as the corporation founders?  Do you think
these people actually care about the stability of the company five, ten
years from now?


> I wonder why they would
> have sought to run on multiple platforms, being platform agnostic, if
it
> wasn't profitable for them?

Because databases are a commodity.  You need to sell many units to make
up the price point, and thus the larger the market share the better.
Also, in most cases the databases are NOT platform agnostic, they are
written specifically for the platforms they support.  There are very few
pure Java databases.


> As it turns out, price point isn't an issue since we are an open
source
> development company and don't charge for the software. Hmmm, now that
I
> think about it, it is the service revenue, support subscriptions,
custom
> programming and system integration that we charge for and those are
> exactly the things you say are most costly in a cross platform
> environment.  So maybe we do have a business model to follow.  Just
> making sure that we cover the additional costs of supporting those
> multiple platforms would be the thing to monitor.

And how WILL you cover those expenses?  By passing them on to the
customer.  And thus, your cross-platform product will cost each of your
customers more than it would if you were a single-platform vendor.


> Still, more to think about.

Yes indeed.