........the name changes have absolutely nothing to do with any public perception of the AS/400
being "old," and everything to do with corporate politics.
.Microsloth has been calling its GUI "Windows" since before the first AS/400 hit the market. The Macintosh has been called a Macintosh for
even longer. Why do they keep using these old names, when Vista bears
only the most superficial resemblence to WinDoze 1.0, and an Intel-based
Mac running Leopard has practically nothing in common with the original
Mac128? Because the names are familiar!
^^^__^^^Bingo! Very important point!
When is DOS no longer DoS?
...When Microsoft called it "Windows"!
...and, when Microsoft called it Windows 98, NT, 2000, XP, and now Vista.
When is an Apple no longer an Apple?
...When Apple Corp called it a Mac!
...and now, Tiger and so on....
When is a System/38 no longer a System/38?
...When it's an AS/400!
Consider the differences between (1)_the System/38 vs. the AS/400, and (2)_between CPM vs. OS/400 V1R1.
Now consider the differences between (1)_..the first AS/400s.. versus (2)_the most recent System i (even the first System i's).
The general information systems market has not had an appropriate appreciation of IBM's midrange systems and servers for a number of reasons.
Sibling rivalry among the various divisions at IBM, undersized marketing budgets for the System i's, being an "un-person" in many IBM presentations, and so on.
But there has been a lingering idea at the executive and controller levels that the AS/400 and its precursors are green-screen machines, where they get one screen at a time with 24x80 characters. And what they have learned to appreciate and work with have sophisticated GUI functionality.
So far, executives in companies with budgets are only aware of the new replacement systems as the System i is. But they have heard of the AS/400, and the green screen is what pops into their mind.
There are two groups that are very much aware of the name AS/400. Those that appreciate it, and it those who don't know it. The decision-makers are increasingly from the latter group.
The decision makers, even in companies committed to maintaining their midrange systems, increasingly demand their reports and queries to come at them in formats that require GUI rendering, like Excel or other spreadsheet format, pdf, charts, tables, graphs, and the like. They are increasingly aware of the kind of flexibility in their requests come in these formats.
So they are asking us for reports in Excel format, and they are asking their Windows guys to give them reports that they derive from their i5/OS databases.
We need to get more aggressive about telling them we can deliver what they want. They have made it a BYOG machine, fine. Bring-Your-Own-GUI then. IBM has some, served up with WDSC, BSD offers an HTML-generating tool and one based on PHP. Brian Kelly is plugging PHP and JACi-something, and there are others out there with browser-based tools that accomodate state retention.
Then there's the name. Those outside of our group of initiates will be polite when you talk to them about the AS/400, but let us be clear. They may well recognize the "AS/400" when you talk about it, but they will think mostly in green-screen terms. Unless they know the platform well, that's what they think of. And often even if they do.
Maybe it's because IBM did not update the image in the marketplace. Maybe it's because RPG programmers have been content with our green screens.
So everybody that's new to it, and especially the decision-makers, you need to educate them on the system anyway, or they won't know. One easy quick way is to call it the "System i".
I still don't like the name but understand the marketing reality of this.
Regard it as a name change with the purpose of recognizing that it is a very different machine from the first AS/400.
--Alan
midrange.com
