Tom B,
Thanks for your comment. As for your question:
>If I understand correctly, INNI has had a relationship with IBM for over 2 years,
>yet has not really profited from this relationship, could anyone explain why?
If I remembered my conversation with Mr. Markee, (President and CEO of I/NET) correctly, he acknowledged that WEBSERVER/400, MERCHANT/400, COMMERCE/400, and WEBSERVER/400 sales have been slow until recently. He thinks the reasons is that people are slow to accept new things. After a little bit research, I believe that there are more fundamental reasons for the slow sales of Webserver/400, etc. in the past.
(1) People tend to choose Netscape or MicroSoft web server products. I evaluated some other web server products myself but I end up choosing Netscape or MicroSoft products every time. I chose Netscape server on UNIX machines such as SUN and IBM/RISC600 and chose MiscroSoft's IIS on NT machine.
(2) There were issues that sometimes prevented people from choosing IBM AS/400 as web server (or buying AS/400 at all). These issues include: (see iws.as400.ibm.com or go to as400.ibm.com and click on "What is AS/400" and then click on "Read the report." )
(a) Top-end capacity.
(b) Hardware cost.
(c) Application portability.
(d) Entry price.
(e) Internet capability. The industry-leading Internet servers from Netscape,
Microsoft, and Lotus were not offered on AS/400.
The problem (1) will be solved when I/NET releases Netscape SuiteSpot server products for AS/400 at the end of July. All issues in problem (2) have been addressed with the release of the new IBM AS/400e series. Note that (2)-(e) is where I/NET comes in.
I am looking forward for the end of July.
yongzhi
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