Re: More IBM Firings

Jon,

I'm sure we'll see the same massive investment that the "strategic" Series/1 got. Maybe shareholders could all take a vote and designate some of the IBM executives as "strategic" to IBM's success. ;-)

Neil Palmer, Cambridge, Ontario, Canada

(This account not monitored for personal mail,
remove the last two letters before @ for that)


--- On Wed, 11/12/08, Jon Paris <Jon.Paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

From: Jon Paris <Jon.Paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: More IBM Firings
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Received: Wednesday, November 12, 2008, 5:29 PM
On 12-Nov-08, at 2:04 PM, midrange-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
wrote:

Ross Mauri's recent letter included a very

unfortunate word in

describing "i". He called it

"strategic". Today being November 11th

I hope you all remember your history lessons,

including what that

designation means to IBM products and initiatives.

Neil - you have it all backwards. I agree it is an
unfortunate word
to have applied to the i but not for the reason you state.

"strategic" in IBM terms means that vast amounts
of money and resource
will be spent on it (and here's the important unwritten
bit)
regardless of whether it is a good idea or not and whether
anyone
needs it or not. That's why when some new
"strategy" comes along,
everyone and his brother frantically tries to make their
product fit
the mold. The current buzz would be SOA, but in the past
AD/Cycle was
strategic, SAA was strategic, VisualAge xxx was strategic,
OS/2 was
strategic. WebSphere may be one of the few strategic
things to meet
with any real success.

"strategic" products tend to get buried under
their own hype and the
number of truly idiotic hanger-on products that leap on the

bandwagon. Some like AD/Cycle and SAA were good ideas in
many ways,
but ahead of their time and the technology curve - and IBM
got "bored"
with them long before the market was ready. But hey! we got
RPG IV out
of SAA so it wasn't all bad!

On-going success stories that were never really strategic
(and hence
successful) would be things like CICS and MQ Series.

Question is are we going to see the massive investment that

"strategic" products normally attract.


Jon Paris

www.Partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com

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