Simon,
As always precise, reasoned, and to the point.
Marketing is the practice of selling and as such one points out their favorable points, not the competitors. GM isn't going to say, "The Chevy Impala gets (whatever) MPG, but, to be fair, the Nissan (whatever) gets better mileage." I'm making an assumption here, but I think most people on the list have engaged in marketing (probably more than once); it's called resume-writing. When I write mine, I stress my successes, not my failures. And when I applied for this job, there were a lot of things I did not include because, frankly, the reader might have thought that they made me "over qualified" and not even have interviewed me. Lying would be saying I have an MBA when I don't; omitting the fact, when I do, is not a lie.
I think someone else on the list got it right when they said that the flier was directed at CFO, CEO types, not System i technical people. Whether or not implying something (such as Oracle is not proprietary) is unethical or not is a gray area, but it might help get one's foot in the door. I got a job once because IBM sold a S/34 to the president/owner of a company, but found out later that it wasn't just a matter of plugging it in. The same would probably apply to the HP solution, but HP is not going to add that to their bullet points because it is not a selling point.
Jerry C. Adams
IBM System i Programmer/Analyst
B&W Wholesale
office: 615-995-7024
email: jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Simon Coulter
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2009 3:15 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: HP Stimulus Package
On 07/02/2009, at 4:35 AM, Ron-Zimmerman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
It's incredible that anyone would put such a boldfaced lie in their
marketing materials!
So which part of Lie == Marketing do you not understand? Actually,
they don't really lie--but they are extremely misleading (which to me
seems to be the point of all marketing materials).
If you listen to a number of the messages coming from IBM you will
see that they do indeed want you to move to Websphere and they want
you to rewrite you applications in Java so they'll run in WebSphere.
WebSphere is complex and expensive. This is part of the rationale
behind the so-called Interactive tax. So no lie--but completely
misleading.
Just because you don't HAVE to use WebSphere nor rewrite in Java
doesn't invalidate the statement. There is very little (I'd say
nothing but you never know with lawyers) for the lawyers to work on
here.
Every misleading statement in the HP document can be refuted. For
example:
o Recent AS/400 announcements
- There have been NO recent AS/400 announcements. The Power System
family does not contain a system named AS/400 (Oh Gods! Now I'm
sounding like Trevor).
o IBM would have you ... totally rewrite .. with .. WebSphere
- IBM would like you to do that but it's not a requirement. You can
continue to use your existing applications on the new Power Systems
family without changing anything as as been the case for 20 years of
upgrades (from AS/400 to iSeries to System i to Power Systems). HP
cannot say the same.
o Document states DB2/400 (which also doesn't exist) is proprietary
and implies that Oracle is not
- Oracle is just as proprietary as DB2 and requires more effort to
maintain
o The first step ... standardizes the database
- Oracle is hardly "standard" it's full of proprietary extension.
DB2 for (our system) is the most standards-compliant database available
o The second part ... is modernization
- Enhancing browser deployment, Adding SOA, etc. This involves
effort and therefore cost. Exactly how is that different from IBM's
preferred approach? And don't both cost more than using your existing
applications on upgraded hardware.
o The final step is sizing and deploying
- So they do the entire conversion process and so-called
modernization BEFORE you know what size system you'll need to run it
on? How can you accurately cost such a proposal?
o The combined value of ... HP-UX, Linux, and Windows delivers
reduced cost and improved performeance.
- Numerous studies show otherwise. Care and feeding of Linux/
Windows/etc. costs more than (our system). Staffing alone is higher
and that's usually the largest cost factor.
There are other minor things that can be refuted. Chuck showed the
holes in their case-studies. Anyone who thinks about this can see the
HP proposal is unfounded and grossly misleading. Anyone considering
such a move should be asking HP some very hard questions.
Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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