Conceptually I don't advocate the update, update, update mentality but
nor can I understand setting a release and never changing. We live in a
world of constant change and it seems to me that companies should be
assuming some sort of upgrade path for both hardware and software.
I know some companies get caught up in a situation where financially it
becomes impossible to justify certain upgrades. Sorry to hear that.
Can't quite fathom it. Since I've been with this platform (17+ years) I
have only experienced 4 major upticks in expenses related to the System
i - all related to a major business change (mainframe erp migration,
mainframe financials replacement, mainframe payroll replacement, and
data warehouse implementation. Other than that most costs have remained
flat - with a CPW growth of over 100% every year for the last 17 years.
I know some releases don't offer those have to have functions but every
release has offered certain enhancements that eventually most companies
should start to want. Off the top of my head I think V5R4 offers some
nice IDS functions, nice virtual tape functions, and eventually the
support point for certain processors.
Personally, if the ability to do something is available in software I'd
rather say I can do it now as opposed to saying wait until we upgrade,
or skip release, or upgrade twice.
Michael Crump
Manager, Computing Services
Saint-Gobain Containers, Inc.
1509 S. Macedonia Ave.
Muncie, IN 47302
765.741.7696
765.741.7012 f
If it's stupid but works, it isn't stupid.
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-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Trevor Perry
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2007 5:34 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Why upgrade was: New redpaper: i5/OS Program
Conversion:Getting readyfor i5/OSV6R1
Aaron,
Another reason to upgrade your OS is hardware and performance related
issues.
For example, some of the new peripherals - especially tape - don't work
with
I/O cards supported in older releases. While this can be fixed with a
Frankeni approach, some companies wish to stick to the 'rules'. They
want
the new peripheral, so they need a newer OS.
Another example is when a customer replaces their hardware and a new OS
version is required.
Of course, these are more along the lines of "forced" upgrades, but when
a
BP sells a new/upgraded box, many of them work to ensure the OS on the
new
server is current.
Trevor
On 7/23/07 4:16 PM, "albartell" <albartell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I am just throwing something in the pot here, but it would be
interesting to
see how much reason there is behind upgrading. For instance, how many
Microsoft OS upgrades have happened in the last 10 years vs. AS400?
And
how many of those upgrade frequencies were for Microsoft to catch up
to what
the AS400 already has. Then one could turn around and say that IBM
should
have been upgrading the AS400 to have native GUI support and what not
during
that same time.
Basically it comes down to the fact that IBM could be producing just
as much
in 1 release as Microsoft does in 2 (or vice versa). For me, there is
very
little reason, that I have seen, to upgrade to V5R4 simply because I
am
primarily developing RPG and the only reason I would have V5R4 is to
state I
am writing compatible code for it.
Is there a good (read easy to understand) chart somewhere detailing
the
features (programmatical/hardware/OS/etc) that would entice a company
to
upgrade from V5R1/2/3 to V5R4? The only reason I could think of off
the top
of my head is runtime support for Java 1.5 and 1.6 (which is only
available
in V5R3/4 I believe) and PHP (which is a fairly good reason if PHP on
the i5
is your company's direction).
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com
midrange.com
