RE: Software Vendors (And US too) - A small rant

Somebody's going to have to work on our Mr. Gibbs about his discussion list
names.





:-))

Paul Nelson
Cell 708-670-6978
Office 512-392-2577
nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Robert Munday
Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2012 8:32 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Software Vendors (And US too) - A small rant

But with IBM changing the name as often as they have and do, how is an
independent rent-a-programmer like me supposed to keep up? I still have
clients who call it "the 400". They pay the bills so they are free to call
it anything they desire. I personally use "iSeries". My most recent client
uses the term "iSeries". If I were selling software in the example you
site, then I would need to know and use the "IBM Name Of The Week"...
whatever that is this week. I personally don't know.



Robert Munday
Munday Software Consultants
Montgomery, AL



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

From: DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Dec 11, 2012 6:29 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Software Vendors (And US too) - A small rant

I know of a company including several persons there personally including
the person who made the mistake. They were asked by a huge potential
customer what their systems ran on. The response: "AS/400". The customer
immediately and finally closed discussions with: "Yeah well IBM quit
making those over a decade ago so you clearly don't have the ability to
support our needs with that." Game over. No explanations, backpedaling,
clarification, could help. The potential customer believed it was a
mindset. What does the company really use? IBM i 7.1 on POWER7. Oops.

Names matter.

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

On 12/11/2012 5:06 PM, Jim Oberholtzer wrote:

Note to software vendors: If you want me to consider your software for
the IBM i operating environment running on Power Systems, please do not
call it, iSeries, AS/400, System i, or my personal favorite System/38.
Clearly if you don't know the name of the system your working on I
cannot trust your software. Most of the vendors monitor this list and
don't hand me the line: "That's what our customers call it....." Don't
correct the customer but always use the correct terminology when you are
speaking and guess what, they will start using it too....

What brought this rant on? Three calls today from vendors asking if I
would like to talk about their iSeries or AS/400 products..... Geesh..
Now I'm starting to sound a bit like Trevor without the accent.....

I'll be quiet now.

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