Re: Older systems -- MIDRANGE-L

IBM is still supporting older systems. We had a drive failure this week,
and the CE said he had to stop to fix a dead F50 model before he made it
out to swap the drive. He still made it to our place before noon, and
we're a 3 hour drive from where he started!

Steven Morrison
Fidelity Express

Vernon Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
12/20/2007 10:56 AM
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Subject
Re: Older systems

Rob

You have the enviable position of being completely in control of the
hardware and OS levels you are using. Vendors are not in that
position. Even IBM supports back a couple levels. Every vendor
chooses their own policy in this regard, and saying that you have
support for v2r3 does not preclude also being right up there on v6r1.
We still have source and an idle machine that COULD let us compile
changes back to v3r2 - have we had to in the almost 3 years I've been
here? Maybe once. We basically freeze it but could handle a bug if we had
to.

We also will be making sure about v6r1 - ANZOBJCVN has already
revealed what we need to do. And we will be putting all our products
to minimum release of V5R1 at that time, with a freeze on
installables back to V4r4 as we have it now.

These are business decisions a vendor has to make - we discuss this
regularly here, with an eye on existing customers - you are your own
customer, so you don't face these issues the same way - as you have
alluded to in your post.

Regards
Vern

At 09:23 AM 12/20/2007, you wrote:

I've been known to harp on this list about vendors who are more

enthralled

to support older releases than newer releases.

I've always felt that I am more impressed with a vendor that participates
in IBM's Early Ship Program for new releases of i5/OS than those who brag
that their stuff still runs on V2R3.

I recently dealt with a vendor who's stuff doesn't pass ANZOBJCVN and

will

not work on V6R1. (They are remedying that.) But he told me that he

made

two sales just last week to CISC accounts. I was impressed. I figured
there were people out there still running that. But I always assumed

they

would never put a penny into those machines. This vendor admitted that
his product is a "utility" and not a full blown ERP package or anything.
And is often "required" (well, if not required, at least the sensible
choice - and I concur) if you are doing business that would benefit from
his utility.

Rob Berendt
--
Group Dekko Services, LLC
Dept 01.073
PO Box 2000
Dock 108
6928N 400E
Kendallville, IN 46755
http://www.dekko.com

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