Joe, I suggest you grace COMMON with your presence when it shows up in Minneapolis in March. You're from Chicago, you should be used to the cold by now. I suggest you attend the luncheon on Wednesday which is held for/by the LUG officials and liasons that attend the conference. Had you attended this in Orlando you would have found an almost 100% agreement from LUG officials that their groups are in decline. Yeah, I think the internet is part of it, but I also think there's serious declining interest in the box as the main server of choice for a company. I suggest you talk to some of the other folks like OCEAN, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Delaware Valley(Philly) is another good one, Ft. Dodge(also recently closed), Louisville(talk to Kay Geswein if you want a earful of midwest reality).... You can find them on the www.eserverusergroup.org web page unless they've been removed due to not being in business anymore. Talk with Bob Langieri, Carole Comeau...or perhaps Tony Morelli from Orlando who almost lost his job for fighting to keep an iSeries and is now going to Windows...or perhaps even our past President of WAM, Jack Fugiel, CIO for Winchester Homes...he'll be on Oracle/unix in under 2 years... EVERYONE I talk with will tell you that they think it's the best box out there....BUT... IBM likes to keep telling us that OS/400 is going to be around "for a long time..." Well, so is and will be OS/2. Joe, you willing to bet your kids college fund on OS/2? But you are right on one thing - I still think it's one of the best servers out there, developed and supported by some of the brightest folks you could want...I just wish they could find equally as bright people on the marketing side.
. As to the serious decline, you talk like the box is being replaced by Windows. It ain't gonna happen, because it doesn't make good business sense. The Windows SMB server gig is already past its prime because, just like outsourcing, the early adopters aren't showing any profit. Check in with Tony Morelli three years from now and find out how his Windows implementation is going. My guess is it will fail spectacularly, and that's not the iSeries fault, or even IBM's. It's because Tony's company doesn't have the right people making IT decisions. This happened all through the 90s and up until today; there are people making IT decisions that can't understand anything more complicated than their electric razor. But as CEOs start to realize that IT blunders are costing them money, the IT wannabees are going to be unwelcome. And comparing OS/400 to OS/2 is apples and oranges. Back then, IBM didn't fathom that there even was a PC market. This time around the SMB marketplace is the showdown for all the marbles, and IBM knows it. Anyway, I am still willing to bet my career on the IBM midrange. You're not, and that's your choice. Joe
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