Re: Who Uses WebSphere Express?

[Mark Phippard <MarkP@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Joe.

We use it and have for a long time.  I think WAS Express is a great product
and with 6.0 it just gets better.

We also sell an iSeries Helpdesk product called ExpressDesk that is largely
built on WAS Express.  We do not force our customers to run it on WAS
Express or on iSeries, but the vast majority do so.

A live demo is here, running on WAS Express 5.1 on an OS/400 LPAR on a
model 520.

http://support.softlanding.com/xdesk/

As an ISV, you do not want to sell a product that relies on something that
is going to be difficult for the customer to install or maintain, and
certainly something that is not reliable.  We have never had to do anything
other than telephone based support for our customers.  All of them have
been able to install WAS Express and our app on their own, with just phone
support from us.  The only hard part, and this largely went away with V5R3,
is that if the customer did not already have WAS Express installed, there
are a fair amoint of Group PTF's to apply, which means an IPL.  At the same
time, that is the benefit of using an IBM supported product - it actually
has fixes available.  Also, the handful of times we have run into weird
issues and had to involve IBM support, the issue was already resolved
quickly, telling me that IBM has a good support organization in place for
this product.

To say WAS Express is not production-ready is libelous.  I did not see the
post, perhaps this person had some legitimate bad experiences.  That does
not mean the product is not top notch.

Mark


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