Re: Marketing the platform was: System i - Mentioned twice in SD Times

On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 12:29 AM, John Earl <john.earl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"My personal suggestion is to use i5/OS in your title. Somewhere on the
page, you can define the audience. An example:"
I understand your logic here - but history has proven it to be flawed.
A business manager that thinks he owns an AS/400 that runs OS/400 will
not often get past the cover page of a brochure that says i5/OS. We've

As an ERP ISV, we just switched to actually selling a solution to the
customer, not i5/OS or the System i.

In the end, what the customers want is a solution to whatever business
problem they're facing right now. They do not want i5/OS, System i,
AS/400, Windows 2000, Mac OS X or anything like that: they want a
solution.

The technical details of that solution aren't unimportant, but they're
not the main selling point. All the customer has to know is that they
have a native Windows and/or Java Client they can use. If they want to
know more, they can read the technical details.

Of course it is another matter when you're dealing with existing
customers. Some of them are technical, but stuck back in the 80ies
with their 5250 sessions. Educating those customers is hard, and
sometimes even impossible.

Those that aren't technical are much easier to handle. Just tell them
that the same software package they're using right now runs on a more
modern System and that the transition is exceptionally easy. Works
well when migrating customers off our old 5250 based solution
(discontinued in 2001 or so) to the current one.

I just now had a look at your signature, and it appears that you're
working for an i5/OS tool vendor. Well, that's a completely different
minefield of marketing, and my advice probably doesn't help you at
all.