Re: Is this really new ?

[Aaron Bartell <aaronbartell@xxxxxxxxx>]

If you take out the hurdles then people start adopting on their own despite
the efforts (or lack their of) of the owners of the technology.  This has
become incredibly obvious to me with my recent pursuit of a GUI Linux
Desktop - it works, it's getting more simple.  Our problem is that we still
have hurdles and vendors are trying to address it by playing in the same
space as everybody else vs. coming up with something that doesn't follow
conventional thinking.

Technology is making people do crazy things these days like jump from one
platform to another simply because the UI is more natively graphical (i.e.
AS400 to  Windows).  I believe that the same crazyness could happen in
reverse and get people back onto the AS400 IF we had a solid programming
stack that included a graphical client.

Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com


On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 4:21 PM, Evan Harris <spanner@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi Aaron
>
> In my experience, people don't consider it bad - they consider it "not
> mainstream" and therefore it's a risk from a professional point of view.
>
> Not being mainstream means it's hard/expensive to find staff, consultants
> turn their nose up at their non-preferred technology and staff have to be
> trained from the ground up to use it.
>
> Since no mainstream consultant - including IBM - is ever going to recommend
> the IBM i (it simply doesn't generate enough consulting income) as part of
> any new solution, managers that have never worked with the technology won't
> recommend or support it. If they are wrong they are wrong all by
> themselves,
> and if they are right it doesn't pad out their CV sufficiently.
>
> I don't think a GUI or anything will help until IBM decide to get behind
> the
> machine and push it as a viable mainstream solution rather than a niche "if
> you already have one" solution.
>
> I'm not holding my breath.
>
> Regards
> Evan Harris