Re: IBM investment in i

["Aaron Bartell" <aaronbartell@xxxxxxxxx>]

I wonder if the box would be more saleable if a vendor would
pre-build/pre-ship it will a collection of off the shelf open source
applications?  For instance, they could load OpenBravo for ERP purposes (
http://www.openbravo.com/), Alfresco for ECM (http://alfresco.com/),
SugarCRM for CRM (http://www.sugarcrm.com), setup a linux partition to be an
email server, Joomla for creating an easy to maintain web presence.

A small company could get a single server to meet a majority of their needs
and only pay for the hardware to run IBM i and Linux.  With all the
enhancements to CPU power in the lesser models (i.e. 515) I would have guess
all of these apps could run quite well without much effort.

Thoughts?

Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com

On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 10:10 AM, Pat Barber <mboceanside@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> Booth Martin wrote:
>
> When the IBM salesman calls on his AS/400 accounts in the
> foreseeable future, what is he going to be selling them?
> IBM has only  "managed decline" to offer.
>
>
> This is exactly what the problem is in my opinion.
>
> IBM or very few other folks are actuallly out there
> trying to sell the product.
>
>  I am not aware of a single IBM rep in the two state area I work in.
>
> I believe when IBM killed the small business partner program back in
> 1998, there was a marked decline in the sales of any boxes. There is
> nobody in my geographic area that actually goes out and makes sales
> calls on customers(cold calling).
>
> IBM hasn't had a sales force in several years and counts on the large
> Business Partners that are left to sell to the existing accounts.
>
> These BPs are "not" selling to small accounts. They have no financial
> interest
> in a small 520/525 account. When these small starter systems started
> dying off, there was nobody there to pick up the slack.
>
> I define a small account as a box that sells for less that $25K.
> These used to be the heart and soul of the box and their decline is why we
> are whining today. NOBODY is selling these machines.
>
> I have several friends that are CE's or retired CE's and I hear the talk
> about the
> lack of new installs, which directly affects their careers.
>
> Forget the "IBM ain't selling the box".... Nobody is selling the box.
>
>
>
>
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