Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"?
** This thread discusses the article: Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"? **
My bet is that that is exactly the kind of confusion that IBM marketing was shooting for. If they can just get the iPod confused as our cool new interface, it's a wrap. Or is that rap? rd
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Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"?
** This thread discusses the article: Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"? **
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Guest repliedIs It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"?
** This thread discusses the article: Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"? **
Is it just me, or does "iSeries", "i5" or "iWhatever" possibly cause some to think they are products for, or related to, the Apple iPod? People, not part of the AS/400 community, might understandably think an "iSeries" is something you might "dock" to speakers, strap to your arm while exercising or download music to? Talk about confusing the market with ambiguous names! Maybe i'll attempt to compile RPGLE on my iPod Nano while listening to the latest music from iTunes that i purchased from the iStore. Yi Yi
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Guest repliedIs It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"?
** This thread discusses the article: Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"? **
When any of the non-AS/400 techies attempt to demean the AS/400 as being legacy or are just otherwise insulting, I ask them to clarify which of our many many corporate boxes they are referring to: "Do you mean the RELIABLE box? The MR NO UNPLANNED down time box? The one running the Company business - you know, the IMPORTANT box." They generally don't have much of a comeback or argument with that.
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Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"?
** This thread discusses the article: Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"? **
Bob Cozzi asked: Why they hell would anyone buy an i5 to run Linux on it?So you could run that nifty HMC on it! Dave
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Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"?
** This thread discusses the article: Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"? **
IBM is marketing Linux as if they make money off of it. Perhaps they make some services cash, but do they sell hardware that people use to run Linux? Sure they offer hardware, but to they actually sell any? A SystemMax twin dual-core XEON processor server with RAID'd DASD is $1500. Download your favorite version of Linux to a DVD or CD and bam! You've got a server running in a day for $1500 plus payroll expenses. If IBM wants us to move to Linux then offer RPG IV on Linux and stop making the non-affordable hardware. Why they hell would anyone buy an i5 to run Linux on it? Sure if you already have an i5 you can run Linux in a partition, maybe. But for $1500 plus salaries (which is actually a wash, because you have to pay the i5 staff just like the staff that does the linux insall) so for $1500 you have a box with a web or mail server (or both) up and running with industry-standard software. The i5 has the best architecture in the world. OS/400 is still great. The _only_ two problems with it are: 1) Rochester doesn't seem to want to make stuff work on it completely (as long as it runs, its good enough). 2) The marketing/branding B.S. All the talk about AS/400 being old technology was created because they actually lasted more than a year in customer shops. "Gosh, Bob, that 400 is old, isn't it?" "Well, yes it is old, sir. maybe we should replace it." The point was supposed to be that we needed to upgrade the box to the latest model; but management reads about how IBM discontinued the AS/400 and then thinks Linux/Unix or Windows. I really wish they'd sell off the Rochester plant is its assets to some company that understands the value of what they can do up there. But at the end of the day its all about career moves, fast money, and milking the life of the things. It is not about longevity. That's strange, I thought we learned back in the 1970s that the major thing we Americans did wrong in business was to plan/think through to the end of the next fiscal quarter. Whereas Japanese businesses had 10-year plans. IBM's latest excuse for the name change game is that "Every 5 years we have a new 5 year plan, so we reband our product line accordingly." More like we change VPs every 2 to 5 years and they new ones take 2 years to do anything and then the only thing they come up with is changing the name so it takes another 2 to 3 years before people realize they have done nothing productive, but by then, they're promoted or out of there.
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Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"?
** This thread discusses the article: Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"? **
It is surely a case of reactive marketing. Sales were down, new sites were not to be found. The was/is a perception that the AS/400 represents old, tired technology. So they came up w/ the name change idea. Still, sales are down. What do you propose IBM does to get the hardware into new locations, and to prevent existing locations from abandoning it?
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Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"?
** This thread discusses the article: Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"? **
One has to be careful when referring to IBM as a single entity. There are those in IBM (Rochester and Toronto particularly) who are very aware of the Future Systems projects and everything forward. But IBM is more than Rochester. It's sometimes difficult to tell if Armonk knows that Rochester even exists! IBM is fully capable of properly marketing the AS/400. I have two words for those who do not believe:. . . . . "Malcolm Haines". The greater picture is that Malcolm's efforts have been shackled, and those who control the marketing picture have chosen to take another route. Dave
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Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"?
** This thread discusses the article: Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"? **
I was just getting use to the name iSeries and that name was several iteration old already. So now I've given up - for me it is an AS400. It's as if IBM is ashamed of their roots - as if there's a stigma attached to the name. If they think that then the company really doesn't know what they already got, and for that matter, where they are going.
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Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"?
** This thread discusses the article: Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"? **
The damage is done, of that there is no doubt. When IBM says they don't care about hardware anymore, they mean it. They don't. The AS/400 was just a market segment for Websphere, bigger than Windows but smaller than Unix. Put an interactive tax on 5250, run some ads showing RPG programmers flipping burgers, and FUD these here too slow for New York marketing mucks into paying Global Systems to convert them to middleware, Websphere and Java. That's our business. Get a move on there, lil' doggie. As long as they act like PS/2, you can't have that hard drive on this model types, as long as they insist the AS/400 is a hard drive for Windows but if you want a real computer we have Unix and the mainframe, and oh you can put Unix on that there lil' doggie if you want to play with the big boys, then you'll keep gettin what you're gettin. Which is nothin. Meanwhile multi-billion dollar companies are running their business on the AS/400, and you will never hear that story from IBM. rd
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Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"?
** This thread discusses the article: Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"? **
As a vendor who has published software for IBM midrange machines for close to 20 years, I have witnessed IBM destroy whatever brand equity they ever had in this market. You don't see Philip Morris change the Marlboro name. Or, Coca Cola, isn't waking up one day and saying let's change our name to ZCola. These brands are backed by hundreds of millions of advertising and promo dollars and they wouldn't dream of completely renaming their products! The AS/400 was a somewhat logical replacement for the S/36 and S/38 machine brands. Once the marketplace accepted it, and software vendors started adding /400 to their product names, you had the ingredients of an ecosystem. This branding helped all of us know at a glance that xyz/400 utility and the box went together. Then IBM started the nonsense... Advanced System... then iSeries. Here's boo boo #1 -- flush down the toilet all the brand equity that IBM and us vendors helped build for "/400." So IBM pushes pSeries, zSeries, iSeries, etc. so they can claim that all these boxes are e-servers and thus the IBM share of the server market is far beyond Sun. Reluctantly, we vendors bought in and changed our websites to say "...xyz software for IBM iSeries (AS/400)." Just when the market is just beginning to know what an iSeries box is -- boom! boo boo #2: the dunces in charge flush all the money they spent on iSeries (and AS/400) down the toilet a second time! What are they thinking? Didn't they read Marketing 101? You don't change the name of a product EVER!!! Instead of brand extensions, IBM whips up brand conflagrations!!! And here's the biggest boo, boo of all -- the ultimate blunder by the "e-business" masters: they named the box the utterly generic System i. Google it right now... There are 1,620,000,000 web pages with System and i on the page. Will enough target customers type "System i" (in quotes) in the Google search box? Thanks IBM for flushing my marketing dollars down the toilet now a third time. I nominate this disaster for a Harvard Business School Case Study on how NOT to market a computer system.
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Guest repliedIs It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"?
** This thread discusses the article: Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"? **
Because i generally work for ERP companies all the users lump the AS/400 in with the core ERP software that runs on it. Users will refer to the data coming from 'BPCS', 'PRMS' ,MAPICS, etc. Some BI's will say the AS4oo or just the 400. Sometimes the Data Warehouse. Whatever they call it, it is viewed as something totally seperate from the PC/Desktop they have planted in front of them. Having said all that, if I tell them that it runs on the AS400 they all know what I am talking about. iSeries gets about a 50/50 response. i5 gets a complete blank . . .
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Guest repliedIs It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"?
** This thread discusses the article: Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"? **
That’s the problem for me. Mention iSeries and our prospects instantly think our application is both legacy and green screen. Mention AS/400 and they ask where the punch cards are! Personally I don’t give a damn about the name, I am the converted. Trouble is you AS/400 preachers keep the new flock away. While I’m at it, they should change the name of RPGLE into R# too. Or R% or R~ or…. I am going to call the box 'Hasta la'. This helps my prospects understand how it integrates into Microsoft’s Vista baby. Loz
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Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"?
** This thread discusses the article: Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"? **
Unix is quite a bit older than OS/400. About 28 years older. Dave
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Guest repliedIs It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"?
** This thread discusses the article: Is It "System i," "i5," "System i5," or "iSeries"? **
Has IBM filed to copyright the name i5Series400? Not yet??? Hmmm... maybe I'd better get on that... Also, does anyone want to guess which Java class you use when connecting to the i5Series400? AS400. Or what the IBM Java toolbox is named? jt400.jar Chris
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