Re: An IBM user group's final message: pwrdwnsys *immed

[Trevor Perry <trevor@xxxxxxxxxx>]

John,

Religious rant or not, you cannot attract people to a platform that is no
longer being sold. If you keep advocating for whatever the platform USED to
be, you will not maintain credibility. I bet that IBM guy said the "AS/400"
was sunsetted, because a couple of years ago, there was no System i. And,
the "AS/400" has been sunsetted.

Your earlier email said:
> Each of us needs to find ways to remain current & bring "new blood" to
> the community in order to ensure the health of each of our IT
> companies.  
You should stick with this. IBM no longer sells System i. And it has nothing
to do with "name-of-the-day". While the community has a mix of AS/400,
iSeries, System i5, System I servers, and they use OS/400, i5/OS operating
systems, those are not current, and those are not the future.

If you want to excite the new blood about the future, tell them how IBM has
a hardware platform that is called Power Systems. Tell them how IBM i is the
greatest business OS on the planet.

Then add your blurb about how PHP can be used to access some of the best
business applications ever, and you will get their blood flowing. I just
spoke about PHP on i at the FASUG Application Day, and I was amazed at how
it energizes the "AS/400" crowd as well!


Trevor



On 10/24/08 3:06 PM, "John Myers" <jmyersmm@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Several years ago, an "IBMer" on the IT Advisory Group (that I'm also
> a member of) of my local community college "drove the final stake in
> the heart of the System i curriculum" when he insisted that the System
> i was "Sunsetted Technology" to the group.  He was from the "Thomas J
> Watson Research Center of IBM" and I was just a "local businessman",
> so who were they to believe?
>
> I don't think that he has shown his face at another advisory group
> meeting since that evening ... that @#$%^&*( ...
>
> It really stinks when I have to fight with an IBMer about trying to
> keep IBM technology in the classroom ... and the M$ oriented
> department head throws this guy's statement in my face each time that
> I try to advocate for the System i !!!!
>
> On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 2:50 PM, Don <dr2@xxxxxxxx> wrote: