RE: Some fodder for marketing, perhaps

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Jones, John (US)
> 
> Except that IBM never marketed it as $300K off the price if you don't
> want 5250.  Instead they said 5250 will cost you $300K.  So it is not a
> discount for not having 5250; it is a fee for having it.

IBM never marketed it in any way.  But the fact is that every year
processors with the same or greater power were cheaper, sometimes
significantly cheaper.  It's just that the enterprise machines were cheaper
by a lesser amount.


> The problem is that IBM took something that was built-in and thus
> considered by the customer base to be 'free' and made it an option.

I personally find this practice reprehensible, but it's become standard in
corporate America.  Give it away free until they need it and then charge for
it.  At least in this instance IBM has been clearly stating for YEARS that
you need to get off the 5250.

 
> An
> expensive option.  Yes, they lowered the purchase price of the base
> server so that it was initially something of a wash, but over time the
> cost of 5250 has become an increasingly higher percentage of the overall
> cost of a system.

Actually, that's not quite true.  In the initial days when there were many
tiers of interactive CPW, the 100% interactive machines were sometimes four
times the cost of the zero CPW version.  Nowadays, there are only two
versions: with and without.


> Believe me, I like the platform as much as anyone on this list, but it
> becomes increasingly difficult to sell management on the cost of
> upgrades.  Things like the charge for Enterprise Edition will kill the
> iSeries at my shop.  It is only a matter of time.

You could move to the browser.  Do you have source?  My product would pay
for itself many times over by giving you a nearly identical look and feel on
a much smaller machine.


Joe