Re: Getting ready for the (far?) future

On Tue, Feb 25, 2020 at 8:01 AM Patrik Schindler <poc@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Am 25.02.2020 um 13:21 schrieb Rob Berendt <rob@xxxxxxxxx>:

They do it to have the newer releases of the software take the best advantage of the latest hardware.

Sounds like typical marketing excuses.

No, they do not do it out of vindictiveness, but to peddle new iron. Iron and support for the iron is what generates revenue for IBM.

This is exactly right. It is not vindictive, but it is to make money.
It is absolutely to <strike>pressure</strike>incentivize customers
into continuing (and increasing if possible) the revenue stream for
IBM.

To continue quoting Rob:

I know that many of you develop software and try to support the current release way back to several releases. However if you were a vendor who only supported current - 1 it may free you up to take advantage of all the latest stuff in the OS. For example, temporal tables, etc.

There is a balance. Some new features produce a real benefit for the
customer or for the developer, but there is definitely a cost to
having to reprogram your existing software to use those new features.
For the vast majority of software out there for the IBM midrange
platform, the pace of meaningful and useful change is far slower than
the sunset cycle IBM has been following and will follow into the
future.

The temporal table example is actually one of the most gimmicky,
solution-looking-for-a-problem type of features that you could have
brought up. Very expensive to buy, very expensive to develop for
(unless you're building a completely new system), and to be perfectly
honest, very little real-world benefit for the vast, vast majority of
IBM midrange shops.

To those who buy newer hardware they want the latest OS to take full advantage of the hardware and not be dumbed down to run on some system sold 8 years ago.

That is absolutely true, and fully justified. But the vast majority of
shops don't *want* to buy new hardware. The vast majority of shops
will eventually reach a point (if they haven't already) where the
hardware they have is far beyond what they need. I know my employer is
at that stage now. When you get to that stage, you really just want to
pay as little as possible to support the existing system for as long
as possible. A new machine is just churn for no benefit on our end
(but lots of benefit for IBM).

John Y.