nothing has changed

[dalejanus]

I don't see anything any different. I don't hear many stories in the trade or business press about new I installations through the vertical industry initiative. My local business partner laid off their long time AS400 salesman, leaving only the system engineer to handle both technical and sales.

While I agree there will be a need for Z/os and I/os (oops, can't call it that. can I still call it os/400?) in the next 10 to 20 years as all the boomers retire, I don't see or hear much about schools teaching those skills.

We are a small company ( 1 man shop) that was owned by a medium company that sold out to a large company. Guess what is in store for us? We are going to replace our custom software that has been tweaked for over 30 years with ....
SAP!


So instead of using software that fits the way we do business, we will change the way we do business to fit SAP. It may be great stuff, but mostly what I have heard about SAP is it takes 5 screens to do what used to be done one one screen.

It seems to me that businesses do not want an IT staff or a consulting firm to maintain their software, they want a large international company with large prices to take care of the software to run their business so it can be just the same as your competitors run their business. And hire expensive consultants to make any changes needed.

So while we always hear great talk by IBM, I don't hear it echoed in the mainstream trade/business press.

The only time you hear I (I series, as400) is with the word 'legacy' and usually the words 'replaced by'

And while I'm ranting, I can't think of a worse thing than calling os/400 by a single letter I. IBM said they could not buy the rights to the term I/os. I guess Cisco owns IOS, and they have as much money as IBM.
So CHANGE IT!! Use something else.


How can anyone do an internet search for I? They could have called it IIX, or Q/os, anything useful.

We don't care about the hardware, we care about the OS. I can't think of a better way to kill the os by hiding internet references to os/400, making it impossible to search for.

IBM sure seems like it is trying to kill the as400, but is having a hard time because it is so good.

I guess they can sell more services to those running windows and unix and aix than to those running os/400.

---Dale

[efnkay]

I feel your pain. My (IBM midrange platform & program language) driven career for 20+ years had to change. Ultimately my company was eaten by another AS/400 legacy shop with all custom-written-business-specific software like ours.

The only victim then was the custom software at each house. Got a brand new mother-ship i box and packaged software. Reason? Owners wanted/needed identical reporting from both entities and weren't ever happy with trying to combine information from one state to another for the "national" picture of their holdings...

Then 3 years of extensive customizing of the package by the provider and in-house staff left the merged company weak and vulnerable and still not achieving the owners goals, the next bigger fish came along and we got eaten again.

They just flushed it all down with one stroke of the handle and both the hardware and software went counter-clockwise into the huge-write-off oblivion. I'll save the "current" chapter of our company details to protect the innocent.

So I've seen in my opinion "The better system loses out to another" and it had nothing to do with what's better, or more current, or best going forward. There wasn't even a discussion. It simply became a choice between what used to drive my career decisions, and why that had to change to what drives those career decisions now.

Dealing with it became a simple question of:
A. Do I work on a computer system that companies use.
B. Do I work for a company that uses a computer system.

I was an "A" driven programmer for a long time. But now "A" thinking isn't available for the
once prevalent and abundant opportunities we enjoyed on our beloved platform and OS.
I had to change to the "B" line of thinking to survive and remain working/living in the same city.

[ann@randrinc.com]

Another perspective

Hi, we are a small company who was an IBM business partner for over 10 years. Yes I morn the death of the as/400 (opps iSeries, opps, who knows). But we realized a number of years ago that not only was ibm abandoning the as/400 on the small end but it was also abandoning that market place. We have customers who have been ibm customers for 20 years but ibm does not care any more about their business. If you are not spending $75,000 - $100,000 a year they don't care about you as a customer. End of story.

We switched over to java and rewrote and developed new every thing. We switched over to linux as the operating system and after trying to use ibm xseries servers for a while realized there was not any additional value for the extra cost.

Oh, we tried to sell our 270, the best offer we got was $150 for parts, so we gave it away.

So where are we now, all java applications running on linux servers mostly running ubuntu linux. And, here is the kicker, we put every application up on www.sourceforge.net for free.

Not entirely sure how this will all end, but I know my customers are getting value for their $$ and I know my software helps to keep them competitive in today's market place. I am having a lot more fun.

It really is Robert Frosts A Road Less Traveled.

Two roads diverged in a wood
And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference

Thanks for listening
Ann Richmond

https://www.randrinc.com

[efnkay]

Considering the huge costs of re-developing your applications, re-tooling your programmers? and the User transition must have been really really BIG...!!!

I'll take that perspective and see that at least your company (and many others I suspect) have determined that the hardware and the skill sets had to change to continue doing business and to be viable (resonable, less expensive) going forward.

Oh sure...I'll say the old as/400 can still do anything, but folks aren't choosing it anymore to do as much or near as much as what it used to be used for...Everything.