Re: Casino switches to AIX

Mark,

The faithful will leave when they are scared off by the FUD. That comes from
the moaning and complaining from places like this list. Which is where this
conversation sat for a while. If the doom+gloom was swamped by the positive,
then the faithful will remain faithful. The hard part is, while everyone is
convinced this is a great platform, they DON'T say it. If it ain't broke,
why talk about it? How do we get the faithful to make noise to overcome the
whining from the people saying "I told you so"?

I advocate that we, as a group, as the IBM i faithful, rally around the IBM
i on Power Systems and spread the word. Stop whining about, in fact, stop
even ~talking~ about the 'name changes'. Stop saying IBM should do
~any~thing. Start being positive about how this platform is the best, and if
you want one, go to IBM and ask for IBM i on Power Systems. There are plenty
of forums and public places for us to do that, and we need to overwhelm the
FUD spreaders with positive noise.

I challenge the members of midrange-L to email one person every week and
annoy the crap out of them with pro-i propaganda. I challenge them to make
so much noise that the IT industry wants IBM i for every shop. Steal David's
sig line (IBM i on Power -- For when you can't afford to be out of
business), or make up your own.

And, if you need a place to put it, I will resurrect www.i4everyone.com and
you can post your noise there.

Let US make a difference.

Trevor
~~
IBM i - power on Power.
~~


On 11/17/08 9:38 PM, "M. Lazarus" <mlazarus@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Trevor,

I am a huge proponent of the system. I was just reporting my
recent observations in my little corner of the world. The conclusion
I have come to, is that even the Midrange Faithful are NO LONGER faithful!

IMHO, that is HUGE! The bread and butter income from this platform
is not from new accounts. It's from the already converted. If they
feel that they are be abandoned in any way or if it becomes less than
cost effective to stay with the platform, inertia will probably not
retain them.

Bringing PHP (and any popular PASE apps) to the i is a brilliant
way of getting additional applications to the system. But, the
biggest obstacles still remain for the many million lines of existing
code: How can John Doe software vendor and Jill production shop
refactor their system or develop new systems by leveraging their
existing software and their in-house talent???

This is the reality that I'm dealing with. I can't just tell the
client that he now has to hire a PHP guy to maintain his new
system. Screen scraping is a short term solution at best. 3rd party
solutions are not cheap and should not be necessary. It's about time
that one of the promises of the box (simplicity) be applied to a very
basic functionality: The GUI. This is what my clients want to
see. I can't deliver that in a cost effective manner now.

-mark