Re: COMMON

Michael,

Here is why you care: (I think you already know this but...)

In the 'x' (read Intel) space Intel spends kabillions of dollars on
marketing, R&D, etc. M$ does the same. So do many other peripheral vendors
(i.e. memory, disks, LAN, etc etc) We can pooh pooh them all day but they
do have some pretty good stuff over there these days.

In the 'i' space we have the best O/S in the world - IBM i. While it
would be possible to run this O/S on other hardware with some (likely
significant) effort on IBM's part that hasn't happened. So what we want is
awesome hardware on which to run our awesome O/S. We cannot support our
own hardware without spending huge dollars. For many years the complaint
has been "Disk on AS/400 is four times what it is on other platforms." Now
that we have teamed up with the AIX guys and Linux on POWER guys we now
have a much larger group supporting our hardware. We WANT the AIX guys to
succeed so they can continue paying for much of the R&D on the hardware
side. We WANT them to continue to purchase large volumes of processors,
memory, boxes, drives, etc. The fact that our hardware is now identical is
GREAT for us because we can use nearly every bit of stuff they create.

In a nutshell we want AIX to succeed so that you software guys can
continue to ignore hardware. If they begin to come to COMMON in droves
that helps COMMON too. I don't see any down side here.

Now as a hardware guy I still care about the hardware bits and pieces
but you can ignore them all day long if you'd like!

- Larry

Larry Bolhuis IBM Certified Advanced Technical Expert:
Vice President System i Solutions
Arbor Solutions, Inc. IBM Certified Systems Expert:
1345 Monroe NW Suite 259 System i Technical Design and Implementation
V6R1
Grand Rapids, MI 49505
(616) 451-2500
(616) 451-2571 - Fax
(616) 260-4746 - Cell


If you can read this, thank a teacher....and since it's in English,
thank a soldier.




Michael Ryan <michaelrtr@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
05/07/2009 02:09 PM
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Subject
Re: COMMON






I'm always curious about that. If a customer is running AIX on Power, does
that mean anything to me? I'm an iSeries guy...I know OS/400 and RPG and
all
the stuff involved with that. And I know AIX too, and in terms of
integration, that's a good thing. But is the hardware important? When I
work
with a client, my value add is knowledge of OS/400 and RPG and
bidness...it's not knowledge about the hardware. If I was a hardware based
BP, it would be different. But I think most folks in this segment of the
industry are software folks rather than hardware folks.

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 1:33 PM, Jeffrey M. Carey <
jeffreymcarey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

There are many more shops using AIX alone - that is the audience I'm
talking about. It is a growing market as IBM consimes more and more of

HP

and Sun's market share.

We want to help all users of the Power platform - even those who don't

use

the best OS!

-----Original Message-----

From: Aaron Bartell <aaronbartell@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: May 7, 2009 7:57 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: COMMON

It seems the AIX intro to COMMON is more about keeping COMMON alive
than trying to facilitate meeting the need of a new group. If I had
to guess I would say there are many more AS400 shops using Windows
servers than AIX - but maybe I just come into contact with the
minority.