On 21/11/2007, at 8:20 AM, Dave Odom wrote:
Further, and to somewhat illustrate what I say... I was talking to
the president of a major IBM partner this last Friday. He started
out years ago as mostly an iSeries/i5 partner but has since
expanded to all other IBM platforms except for mainframe. He told
me MOST of his revenue comes from the pSeries or the xSeries, NOT
from the i5.
Not surprising. I'll bet most of his revenue is from SERVICES related
to p and x. I've been saying for years that the lack of services
revenue associated with iWhatever is both its biggest advantage and
biggest disadvantage.
It is a serious advantage to a customer because they don't have to
continually pay for a bunch of vendor/partner/employee personnel to
be tweaking/faffing/messing about with the installed systems.
It is a serious disadvantage for a business partner because they have
to find NEW i customers if they want to increase business. A business
partner focused on non-i systems has a much easier time because
existing customers are a source of continual revenue. IT is much
easier to milk existing customers than to find new ones.
Conversation 1:
iSeries customer: Hello?
Business partner: Hello, this is your BP calling. How's your new system?
iSeries customer: Just great thanks.
Business partner: Anything we can help you with?
iSeries customer: Nope, things are running fine.
Business partner: Performance?
iSeries customer: That's fine.
Business partner: Database?
iSeries customer: Fine.
Business partner: Hardware?
iSeries customer: Fine.
Business partner: Any other problems
iSeries customer: Nope.
Business partner: OK, I'll talk to you in six months.
iSeries customer: OK, bye.
Conversation 2:
xSeries customer: Hello?
Business partner: Hello, this is your BP calling. How's your new system?
xSeries customer: Seems fine, thanks.
Business partner: Anything we can help you with?
xSeries customer: Well, actually, there's this odd problem ...
Business partner: OK, we'll send someone out.
xSeries customer: And there's a problem with ...
Business partner: OK, we'll send someone out.
xSeries customer: Do you guys know anything about ...
Business partner: Why, yes we do, we'll send someone out.
xSeries customer: That's great
Business partner: Can I have a purchase order for this?
xSeries customer: Sure
Business partner: OK, I'll talk to you next week
xSeries customer: OK, bye.
Now, I'm not advocating that IBM should redesign our preferred system
to REQUIRE more services. That's not in the interests of the customer
but I do expect them to push that point so potential customers can
become aware of the advantages. But there is a conflict of interest
here; IBM is a services company so it's not in the interests of the
corporation as a whole to push a system that doesn't need as much
services as competing systems.
I'm sure that's behind some of the unnecessary complexity with
WebSphere (and similar software). Some of this complexity is simply
because most of this software comes from Unix and those developers
really don't think in terms of ease of use. They're used to doing
things the hard way because that's just how it is. 50 levels of
directories, 5000 configuration directives, inter-dependencies up the
wazoo, is business as usual for them. However, I'm equally certain
that a lot of it is driven by the need for services revenue. If a
software vendor creates a product that is complex to install, complex
to run, complex to change there is a higher chance it will find
favour with services organisations than a product where the
complexity was designed out of the product without affecting the
function.
Also, yesterday, I was talking with an IBMer about DataPropagator
for the i5 and we got to talking about DB2 under i5/OS. He told me
about some new function in DB2/400 and thought that was just as
neat as sliced bread. I said, see there, that function's a perfect
example of how behind the i5 is; that's been around for YEARS in
the real DB2s. This, and other examples, coupled with the demise
of both i5 user groups in this state in the past several years
tells the trend. I think the platform can be saved but ONLY if
it can get up to speed with respect to the offerings from the other
platforms.
Which new function?
Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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