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To: David R. Evans who wrote (7767)	1/14/1998 2:04:00 PM
From: Dick Brown	Respond to of 12039

Yes, software and function will always require more horsepower, more memory or dasd. I'll never believe that bogus sw was created just to sell hardware..VSAM is alive and well, the last I heard..My job was more service orientated from CE, PSR and then, close to marketing as an SE..In the 60's when the 360 saved the company the customer depended on IBM to hold their hand. Customers at that time didn't have a clue and looked to us for direction. IBM thought, and correctly so at first, that we knew what they needed..Customer sure didn't..As the industry matured, management, who's roots were probably in the 60's, couldn't see the change in the marketplace and that there were other options and that we, in our small world, didn't necessarly have all the answers..Yes I know SNA (Systems network arch.)..It is the foundation for VTAM, I assume alive and well.. I had cpu's in my territory that never had a failure..SW was a different story..it was just so complex..I learned the internals on several operating systems..VM, MVSxa and loved CICS.. I'm blabing too much now...I can't get into the minds in the ivory tower though..All I know is in the field customer satisfaction was ##1 priority.. People don't appreciate that programs written on those 360's can still be run on current technology assuming that the access methods are still supported.. Dick

To: David R. Evans who wrote (7767)	1/14/1998 6:38:00 PM
From: Sean W. Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12039

Hello Dick, I am sure that YOU always cared about your customers BUT that was never the IBM way of Marketing. They sold big Iron (Hardware) so everything they did was done to sell that hardware. I disagree. IBM sold solutions which consisted of both expensive hardware and software :) SNA and Microchannel??? what do they have to do with anything here? SNA was one of the first network protocols available when most people had no idea what a network was. It should have died along time ago but it works and works well for some customers. Microchannel is the most advanced and best archectected BUS every to grace a PC. PCI still lacks features found in MCA. Unfortunately the world wasn't ready and IBM didn't know how to OEM it...... Got to admit. never had to worry about IO Address/DMA/IRQ conflicts in MCA. Now where did I put that reference diskette :) I knew many IBM reps who were very good people and only wanted to do their job well. It was the IBM mentality that got in their way. Eventually that mentality was what provided the opening that Microsoft used to get to where they are now. agreed. I predict that Oracle will be the next victim of their own "sell at all cost" mentality. Anyone who has to deal with Oracle will know what I mean. Oracle is only concerned with the "BIG ORDER and could care less about the little guys. They even screw the big orders when they get a chance. agree here. Its hard to be everything to everyone. Joe Six pack has never needed any of their software. Most PC users are probably not aware of who informox, Oracles, Sybase, or Computer Associated are.... BM was and is a very good company; they just lost sight of the small & home market. Once they realized the home market was too important to ignore they tried to manage it the same way as the Corporate market and found out too late they couldn't. I have heard a lot varying opionions here. Making products for enterprise and corporate markets are very very different games. The profit margins on the low end are absmissal and many choose not to play there because its a commodity market. Cisco is a prime example of this philosophy. Because of margins there are always trade offs and in the end I think much of the blame is on consumers who have continually voted with their wallets in supporting the lowest purchase price option while failing to consider reliability, service, and support (The TCO buzzword that everyone is now saying). nuff rambling, I could speak on this for hours..... Sean