WDSC 7 Arrives Amid Changes at IBM

[MCWebsite.Staff]

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[Guest.Visitor]

WDSC 7 Arrives Amid Changes at IBM

** This thread discusses the article: WDSC 7 Arrives Amid Changes at IBM **
Joe: Well-written...great information. I have yet to hear from a single person who thinks that IBM's decision to keep Screen Designer (where's Print Designer?) out of the Standard Edition of WDSc was a good idea. Especially when you factor in the deprecation of CODE Designer. It's clear that the wrong people are making the decision. Thanks for supporting all developers in sending IBM the message that this must be corrected. We all want to use the best tools available...we just don't want to have to mortgage our companies' futures in the process. --Bruce Guetzkow PS: Thanks for being part of the WMCPA Conference...we hope you'll be back again next year!

[Guest.Visitor]

WDSC 7 Arrives Amid Changes at IBM

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Thanks Joe. As expected, you've netted out the message and made some great points. Hopefully some common sense will surface at IBM from all this. Carl Pitcher

[Guest.Visitor]

WDSC 7 Arrives Amid Changes at IBM

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It has taken me six years to make it to a shop where I can use WDSc or whatever it is called today...after years of self training and paying to be on multiple time shares as they decide they aren't playing anymore....and NOW...after buying into all of your BS you are going to make it IMPOSSIBLE...yes, read it again, IMPOSSIBLE for me to continue in the direction that you have led me and I have so FOOLISHLY followed...can you guys READ? Can you HEAR? Can you SMELL? CAN you FEEL? Can you THINK? Do you BREATHE? ARE YOU HUMAN? What planet are you FROM? CAN you learn from the people (RPG P/A's) who have made not just USA but world businesses run the way they have to get them to the place that so many are today, and who really UNDERSTAND BUSINESS (and use your tools to make these BUSINESSES work very well, thank you)....as you guys so very clearly don't when it come to supporting the platform that has made world business what it is.... If you make power hammers resonable, more power hammers are sold. If you make them punishingly expensive more people with use non power hammers. If you let us use the power hammers for a while and get us to change career direction thinking we can use your power hammers and then you take it away....your power hammer is going to look like a betamax sitting on a retail shelf. Just when I thought I had caught the carrot. Craig

[Jlowary520]

WDSC 7 Arrives Amid Changes at IBM

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As always you've done a good job of summarizing everything down, so that even the IBM Marketing Dept should be able to UNDERSTAND! Hopefully the can tell we are paying attention and they will wake up themselves, and if they were just trying to put another nail in the coffin of the "System Formally known as AS/400" (squiggly symbol here) they will realize this one is going in a little bent!!!! -- Jim

[J.Pluta]

WDSC 7 Arrives Amid Changes at IBM

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It would just be nice if someone realized that the System i is NOT a System p or System x. I hear that blade servers are "flying off the shelves". Well sure they are -- they cost one tenth the price of the System i. But I bet they're not selling compilers with every one of those machines. In fact, I bet they're not selling much else besides the hardware and maybe the OS, and I bet the margin isn't very high, either. I wonder how many copies of Rational Application Developer have been sold with each System x (or better yet, with each System p!). My guess is not nearly the ratio of 5722WDS sold with each System i. That's because the deployment model is different. I just wish IBM would realize they have two distinct business models, and would allow them to compete with one another. If somebody with just a modicum of common sense would realize that a tightly integrated machine with semi-custom software is still the best deployment vehicle for businesses, then they might sell a few machines. Sell commodity machines to commodity businesses, but sell the System i to companies that realize that IT can actually be a differentiator (as it has been since the 60s). Joe

[J.Pluta]

WDSC 7 Arrives Amid Changes at IBM

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Craig, the problem is that a generation of coders has been raised to think that assembling pre-packaged components into assemblies is programming, and that IT is an expense that needs to be minimized by getting the cheapest components. Few C-level executives actually understand that IT, properly managed, is a PROFIT center, because it reduces expenses and increases sales. And mroe importantly, that it's not off-the-shelf software that will maximize IT, but instead custom or semi-custom software that is designed to exactly match a company's business model (and to be able to change with it). This is where the System i and its integrated environment shines. Instead of spending time trying to manage multiple off-the-shelf components (and vendors and licenses and interfaces and...), you instead focus on building up your core business functions and providing unique, differntiating features to your clients. Think about it: If all your software is off the shelf, then what makes you any different from your competition? The System i has ALWAYS allowed companies to differentiate themsleves, and this has been one of its strongest points. Joe

[J.Pluta]

WDSC 7 Arrives Amid Changes at IBM

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I just don't understand why the idea of including a few licenses in 5722WDS for a slight bump in fee is so anathema to them. It means they will ALWAYS get some revenue from an iSeries sale, even from SMBs who currently never have thought to buy a GUI tool. And to think they're going to get $3500 a seat (or even $1000 a seat) is just silly. It's somebody with a spreadsheet and no real knowledge of the iSeries development environment. IBM has NOBODY in their sales department who really understands the iSeries community. Joe

[J.Pluta]

WDSC 7 Arrives Amid Changes at IBM

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There is a contingent of folks at IBM who seem to think that the way to make money off of System i developers is to create a for-fee replacement to an existing tool and then "deprecate" the existing tool. I hope this is a small contingent, and I hope they realize that this just won't work. All they will do is poison the fledgling relationship developing between traditional green screen developers and the brave new world of WDSC. I've taught hundreds of people how to use WDSC, and almost to a person they want to continue on with the tool. But if they have to go back to management to get more dollars for the already premium priced System i, it's just not going to work. But someone shoves sales figures and projections under someone's nose and suddenly the System i looks like an untapped resource. Sorry, but the System i well is tapped by 5x priced memory and 10x priced disk drives. You'll need to get your software money from your commodity-priced buyers. And thanks for having me. I love speaking at all the LUGs! Although people do tend to poke fun at my passion for the platform .

[Guest.Visitor]

WDSC 7 Arrives Amid Changes at IBM

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I work for businesses where I continually jump thru hoops to catch the carrot and the business achieves success and I get my carrot to take home. This is the way I understand business and I like it that way. Let's take a whatchamacallit (AS/400) business model...Let's chain that machine down to the ground (interactive tax) and see if those Analysts can jump thru enough hoops to get their businesses to run and then if they use the tools that we give them to use and they get thru enough hoops to make their businesses run, then lets Whip them silly if they think they can continue to use those tools....we will fix them, they will not succeed. IBM, What do you want? IBM???? Listen up, I work for a very progressive shop. I use WDSc. This shop is in progress eliminating green screens (Not with WDSc), where it makes sense. Management has said use WDSc for now (previously they had said WDSc would be the editor of choice), but there will be 'NO' seat penalties paid. Looks like they are gonna go after the carrot, not the whip. Craig Thanks, Joe for another great article.

[David Abramowitz]

WDSC 7 Arrives Amid Changes at IBM

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Joe Pluta wrote: I just wish IBM would realize they have two distinct business models They used to Joe...(sigh) They used to. Does anyone else remember the GSD and DSD? Dave

[R.Daugherty]

WDSC 7 Arrives Amid Changes at IBM

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I can add very little to what you have said so well, Joe, but I will just add this. I think anyone that has read a post from me knows what I am going to say. Websphere. Believe it or not, this isn't about revenue. IBM trying to gin up revenue with exorbitant development seat prices? Nope, not IBM. And this isn't about logic or reason, or caring whatsoever about their customers, or trying to provide a continuity to the customers who rewarded IBM with bountiful business all these years until IBM bet their business on Websphere. There is no logic, no reasoning that can be made, for IBM this is just another onerous interactive tax, more effort to force captive customers to use Websphere. That's all they care about. That is all they do. Not that that isn't about money. That's all it's about. It's their future lifeline, a scheme for every user to pay a toll to use software when they log into every Websphere server, and they will cut off anything that chokes that lifeline. Their 5250 to Web products were for transitioning to Websphere. Clearly, they are done transitioning. As a customer, I saw SSA do the same thing. I went to Chicago in 1997 or so to see them roll out their new AS/SET replacement for BPCS 5250. The owner said, and I quote liberally here, "We're not Y2K fixing BPCS RPG, and green screens will be gone by the end of the year. You don't have to follow us, but we're moving on." They moved on, to bankruptcy. Trying to sell an iseries computer as a computer to run Websphere will be just as unsuccessful. IBM will survive, those clueless marketing people will go push Websphere on whatever is left, but there will be few who will make that forced march to what is good for IBM instead of their customers. rd

[SoftwareTrend]

WDSC 7 Arrives Amid Changes at IBM

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For years IBM wrapped SQL development into an optional product - that just made my customers wonder what is wrong with this RDBMS - no other major DB system did this - must be a problem with the legacy system. Or worse, the /400 SQL was just a piecemeal add on. Now IBM inflates the price of the defactor development tool for their product when other major DB vendors are, or are starting to, give their development tools away for free. Existing Application vendors will still service the market (although their numbers seem to continue to dwindle) but how many applications from new sources will be developed with this platform expressly in mind?.

[nandelin]

WDSC 7 Arrives Amid Changes at IBM

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Frank Soltis suggested once that if you don't like the price of iSeries disk drives, then order from the pSeries group, suggesting that the hardware components were identical. So with respect to WDSC, the question is whether bundling developer tools with the server is a better strategy over the long term than decoupling the two? If you decouple WDSC from the server, and charge separately for each, it stands to reason that the price of the server could fall as the price of developer tools rises. The server group, and the Rational developer group would have to stand on their own, which would open the door for competition, particularly in the developer tools arena, which in the long-term is in the best interest of developers. Nathan M. Andelin