AW: End of the road for 7.1?

I don't understand how ISVs don't support a newer release.

It is sometimes really hard if you are an ISV.
I'm working for a small software house and we have to serve a lot of
customers who are still! On V5R4 releases.

Last Summer (2015) we finally! decided (after long discussions) to only
support release 7.1 and higher.
And with this decision we also decided write everything in RPG free format
(including free H, D, P specs) and exploit the enormous enhancements in SQL
(in 7.1 up to 2 TRs back) .
Don't ask how often we/I have to write 2 versions of a program and how
often we have to reinvent the wheel because there is any customer who wants
to have any enhancement for an older release.
And don't ask how often I have to justify this duplicate work (i.e. "Why you
had to write it in full FREE format, why did you use new SQL functions
etc.")
I think we may be the exception in doing duplicate work!
Duplicate work is "wasted" money and who pays for it?
And for small software houses every customer counts!

It seems sometimes to be a doom loop: Software houses cannot upgrade,
because there are some customers still having old releases that have to be
supported. Customers cannot upgrade because the software vendors do not
support the newer releases.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Best regards

Birgitta Hauser

"Shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you'll land among the stars." (Les
Brown)
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." (Derek Bok)
"What is worse than training your staff and losing them? Not training them
and keeping them!"

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] Im Auftrag von
Bradley Stone
Gesendet: Thursday, 07.4 2016 21:39
An: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Betreff: Re: End of the road for 7.1?

I don't understand how ISVs don't support a newer release.

It's super simple (well, once you find the "new" website) to set up a free
hosted partition using Virtual Loaner at any OS level with IBM.

Too many dependencies on "ported" products maybe? Most "native" stuff like
C, RPG, even Java don't seem to have issues with newer releases unless it's
a bug.

Brad
www.bvstools.com

On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 2:09 PM, Steinmetz, Paul <PSteinmetz@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

I just asked my manager for an update on our major 3rd party product,
if they are certified on V7R2.
We asked originally 2/4/15, still testing.
Now we got an answer back they don't have the hardware/resources for a
V7R2 LPAR.
So in other words, they haven't even started their V7R2 upgrade to
certify their product.
Not sure if I should mention their product, (probably did on some
other
threads) , but someone needs to give them a KIA.

Paul



-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
DrFranken
Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2016 1:56 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: End of the road for 7.1?

Clearly the ISVs should support 7.2 some still don't (boneheads!)
However many MANY won't be supporting i 7.3, er iNext, quite yet so
that would mean only i 7.2 for many customers if i 7.1 isn't available at

least as a guest.

I honestly wouldn't expect that TR11 has 8+ support. Given testing
cycles that would have to mean POWER8+ is in the can for months already.

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.Frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com - Personal Development IBM i timeshare service.
www.iInTheCloud.com - Commercial IBM i Cloud Hosting.

On 4/7/2016 11:08 AM, Rob Berendt wrote:

<snip>
Given that i 7.3, um I mean iNext, has not been announced yet it's
not very reasonable for IBM to have only one widely supported
release available for it's newest generation of hardware. Clearly
iNext won't be supported by all ISVs yet (though it SHOULD BE) and
it should be pretty close to iNext announce for POWER8+ </snip>

If they announce iNext first, or same time, then there will be two
versions supported for Power 8+ And, if it's really that close, then
it is possible that TR11 of 7.1 has Power 8+ support.
http://www-912.ibm.com/s_dir/sline003.nsf/554c38c4848b77f2862567bd00
46 e003/85fc5e8ebc0523048625779900742abc?OpenDocument

And, while many ISV's can only be dragged kicking and screaming to
go to a new release, 7.2 has been out long enough that they should
support

that.

If you think IBM plays software releases close to their chest that's
nothing compared to hardware. The last thing they want is someone
not buying new hardware this quarter on the belief that something
new is imminent.


Rob Berendt

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