Re: Opinion makes little difference - WAS: IBM investment in i

Neil,

It would obviously be in our interest if IBM were to differentiate and market IBM i as you've asked. But your overriding message is that the fate of the platform is hopeless. So your position comes across as conflicted. What are you asking? That IBM clean up it's act? Or that we resign ourselves to a hopeless fate?

IBM has done most of the damage they're likely to do to the platform. In the past, they failed to differentiate it from a marketing perspective, priced it significantly higher, and lied that the price difference was hardware related. That was a tripple WAMMY against the platform.

So in comparison to IBM's shenanigans of the past , the merger of "i" and "p" and "Linux" under Power VM, and unbundling hardware and software pricing, is a step in the right direction.

And while market share slipped under IBM's former modus operandi, units sold tended to rise. That was a good test of the platform's resiliency and clearly differentiates it from OS/2. So your assertions about our hopeless fate appear to be unfounded.

IBM appears to be saying that "i", "AIX", and "Linux" are on equal footing from a marketing perspective. While you may not be satisfied with that, it's a pretty big boon to many of us who continue to invest in the platform.

Of course, I was optimistic about the future of the platform and continued my personal investment in "i" centric Web technologies during the years that it appeared that IBM was bent on relentlessly milking it to death, so my initial optimism is beginning to pay off with IBM's recent moves.

Just as IBM morphed into a services company, IBM i is morphing into a Web centric platform, so the outlook is good, from my perspective.

Nathan.