Re: Say Hello to IBM System i5! -- MIDRANGE-L

Ah, I see the problem..

Obviously, it's more important for you as vendor to persist on your
views of application "transformation".

Keith, I am not a vendor. I used to work for a vendor, and I now dooccasional refacing/repurposing consulting assignments. I have had a lot ofsuccess with several modernizing tools, and from that can talk about thebenefits of modernizing - which, btw, is not just refacing.I currently work for an IBM hardware business partner, although my primaryjob now is a higher level of consulting - defining IT Strategy and roadmapsfor modernization. When I do this, there is no selecting a particularproduct until defining a roadmap. The choices then depend on the currentenvironment, the skillset available, and specific company businessobjectives and directions. Change your assumptions about me, and you mayread my words in a different light...

I don't share yours that business apps are inheritantly modal or need to
be modal and thus make a refacing tool OK.

I never said a refacing tool makes modal ok. I do think that most ERPprocesses are modal. For example, you must determine the customer, thencredit check them, then look for product, then allocate product, thenconfirm shipping, then process the order. A good ERP will let you revisiteach of these steps, but the process is primarily modal. Web applicationstend to be much lighter than that, and the lack of modal can cause problemsin the middle of the process.

I'm sure there are cases where such a tool is appropriate
(B2B,B2C, casual/occasional users), but from what I've seen,
management tends not to see much ROI in refacing
their core 5250 applications (by 5250 I mean terminal not the datastream).

This is a difficult thing. A lot of IT management don't understand the valueof just refacing. A lot of user management want refacing so they havesomething like Windows that is familiar to their users. And IT managementtell them they are wrong. And then there are a large number - from what I'veseen - who want to start with refacing. And, if you do ~any~ research, thereare often significant gains and ROI from ~just~ refacing. While there arepeople telling them that there is little or no advantage (again with thelack of education), then there will be management who think there is notmuch ROI. And while there are people building crappy GUIs and selling crappyGUI tools, there will always be evidence that refacing has little ROI. Iknow many customers who spent more time in upgrading their refacing thanthey did on the intial refacing pass. Althought that was caused by crappytools, people blame the GUI for the problems and lack of ROI.

If you make the case, open mind people will buy it.

Aha! And how do I open the minds of people who still call the System i5 anAS/400? How do we open the minds of people who call i5/OS an AS/400? How dowe open the minds of green screen developers to move forward?