Re: I5 and 2009 questions etc.


"JTF" <jflaker@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ed50a3a7-555c-4d12-b87e-85f13e283915@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Dec 30, 8:22 pm, DBDriver <DBDri...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
iseriesflorida wrote:
Outside of reading the ISERIES related magazines, the economy, Dr.
Soltis departure and who knows what else and having worked on the
I5
for close to 20+ years you sometimes have to wonder what will
become
of the platform. I would be interested to know what most think, if
IBM tanked like the car industry what would become of IBM and the
platforms they sell, what will become of it if the economy stays
the
way it is. Is it safe to assume like I did back in 1989 when I
started working on the AS400 that it would be around 20 years easy
or
is it to hard to predict what will become of it even within a
years
timeframe based on todays who knows what scenarios. Do they have
to
do 'A' for it to survive or will it survive easily. I would like
to
hope that the visionaries can give it another 20, that's what I am
banking on at least for now and so is my eventual retirement.

They need NEW customers. Existing sites buying new boxes are where
the
"sales" are coming from at the moment (or rather the sales were pre
the
meltdown). In the meantime there is a gradual loss of existing sites
especially from the bottom end. Have a read of the group and you'll
glean that a lot of the sites have home-grown or heavily customised
solutions. Very few new sites will want this. In the lower end
they'll
buy the software solution and then the hardware to back it up. In
the
upper end there might be some sales but which IT manager is going to
introduce this platform in favour of those more widely promoted in
the
media and education circles?

The current state: IBM won't drop the box prices significantly. So
that
is not an option. The existing 3rd party software vendors are not
bringing in many new sales and lets face facts - their software
products
are as overpriced in the marketplace as the IBM software offerings).
IBM
has already tried funnelling money into major software vendors on
other
platforms to port their applications. That didn't seem to work.
Finally,
we still have a crazy idiom that you are "buying a box with a
built-in
database" only to find that you have to buy the SQL/development
tools
feature to manage it as a RDBMS (I have never seen any other RDBMS
vendor do this! Madness!).

The solution? They need new customers. They have to get more 3rd
party
product out there that targets the platform. Build a "developers
edition" that costs the same as a PC workstation (~$US2000). Dump
everything on it - full SQL Development kits and WDS - all part of
the
deal with no extra costs. What's to lose? If it sells well we then
know
there are people interested in developing for the platform. If it
doesn't then we all know there is no developer interest and you can
kiss
the platform goodbye.

Rj.

If they would offer a developer version of the OS port to the Intel
and the like (PC Clone) platform for $2K, I think there would be many
developers interested in creating a server or a virtual machine. A
big contributor to the cost of the iSeries is the hardware.

Right now, the only way to count developer interest is to survey the
free and pay AS/400 sites and see how many are using them and survey
the newgroups...

2K is nothing in the grand scheme of things and to be able to use and
administer, which is what is missing from the free and rental AS/400
sites, would be fun and educational.

I can't justify the cost of operating a small iSeries in my home, but
I can justify



For over 10 years I have proposed that IBM produce a machine for less
than $5k for home use by developers.

Further it and all larger Power systems should be pre-configured with
the hypervisor with 3 virtual machines. One VM would be Sys-i, one
AIX and one Linux. Each of these three VM's should come free for one
or two concurrent users and with a fare fee for additional users. By
providing free access for development, IBM would encourage users to
experiment and make new systems that rely on a mix of system features
only available from IBM..





.

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