Re: new as400.ibm.com site

[MacWheel99@xxxxxxx]

From Al Macintyre 

Remeber to cut / paste just what we replying to ... don't re-forward the 
whole thing ... I am trying to cover a lot of points here.

cut / pasting reply here from clues on more than one list - thanks for the 
URLs & tips how to try to navigate them.  Hopefully IBM will wake up to the 
notion of customer-friendly web sites & make some repairs before the media 
blitz displays IBM dirty laundry to other than the choir.

> http://www.as400network.com/nwn/story.cfm?ID=8465
>  
>  The goal of the rebranding is to increase sales. 
>  Ian Jarman, AS/400 product marketing manager. "We're proud of 
>  our individual servers, but we have to act together on a new level 
>  to bring the full power of IBM into the market. When we deliver the 
>  full power of IBM -- our marketing, our development, our technology 
>  -- that's where we lead the industry."

The rebranding will need to be accompanied by relevant marketing, which I 
assume is on some kind of schedule that is not allowing time to fix the web 
sites, so we will have to test them & identify the bugs & tell IBM PDQ what 
the problems are.

>  To demonstrate togetherness, IBM gave all the servers the family 
>  name, IBM eserver. The "e" refers to IBM's cherry-red "e mark" logo 
>  and is meant to draw attention to the servers' strengths for e-
>  business. Each server line then received an individual name 
>  consisting of a letter to denote its strength, the word "Series," 
>  and a number that refers to the server's old identity. The new names 
>  are:
>    * iSeries 400 (AS/400) - "i" is for integration, innovation,
>      and independence.
>    * pSeries (RS/6000) - "p" is for performance.
>    * zSeries (System/390) - "z" is for near-zero downtime.
>    * xSeries (Netfinity) - "x" is for X-architecture.

Where is "s'" for security in this marketing perspective?  Perhaps IBM does 
not want to advertise virus-free hacker-free etc. for fear of being an 
invitation to bad guys.

The new IBM announcement is on several web sites far from as friendly as the 
old - I had to pull the plug on my AOL comm line to get my PC back after 
discovering that IBM is a bit insensitive to folks whose PC stuff is mildly 
legacy.  This is nothing new to me ... in 1999 I upgraded from AOL 3.0 on Win 
3.1 to AOL 5.0 on Win 98 & suddenly there was a world of internet open to me 
again ... previously about 3/4 of the sites I wanted to visit did not want my 
old legacy to visit them.  I figure 95% of the web sites out there do not 
want visitors with PCs whose state-of-art is more than a few years old.  

Don't blame my PC for IBM site locking me up ... this weekend I deleted my 
Temporary Internet Cache (approx 5,000 files) & got caught up on all sorts of 
PC housecleaning ... only thing lacking now is latest Anti Virus update & 
another total backup.

> From: Jim Franz

>  check out the new www.as400.ibm.com

Been a while since I been to the OLD one so not see what is different.

My legacy PC "sees" only 3/4 of the screen sideways but fortunately my 
printer does not lose all the sideways like at a lot of sites, only some of 
it.

What seems to be missing here is any mention of DB & core business support.  
It is like they are pushing e-commerce to the exclusion of brick & mortar 
realities.

Someone mentioned on another thread that IBM launches UDB enhancements on 
other platforms before AS/400 gets them ... well I don't care, we do have DB 
native to AS/400 DB machine ... I think externally defined files that can do 
relational data base functions is a powerful resource that IBM marketing 
should be mentioning more prominently to combat the popular myths about what 
AS/400 allegedly does not have.

> From: Rubens Lehmann

< snip > 

Basically IBM support for Brazilian customers is an infinity of links to
>  ========================================================
>  Error 404

>  The file was not found, even after searching on any extensions to the file
>  name. The file does not exist or is read-protected.

>  Lotus Domino Go Webserver - North American Edition 4.6.2.7
>  ========================================================

and lockups similar to what I experienced ... Ruben has not given up yet

Perhaps we loyal IBM customers need to figure out who to tell at IBM that 
there are some problems with their web sites that they MAY want to fix ... 
for all I know IBM is as disinterested in Brazilian customers as they are in 
AOL 5.0 folsk ... there are 2 pieces of information to try to get thru to IBM 
... here are the addresses of your broken links & what software is out there 
to check this sort of thing for your web sites automatically?  I can suggest 
some sites in the quality software biz that IBM might be interested in 
reviewing if truely interested in re-inventing self to avoid this sort of 
performance in the future.

> From: L. S. Russell
>  
>  It's an AS/400 with a brand new copper colored stripe!
>  Where is the marketing strategy? They claim to target this iServer 400 to
>  the small to medium sized business.  Someone on another list asked; "do
>  small to medium sized business need 24 way 840's?". 
>  
>  http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/

This took me to the same place as www.as400.ibm.com

I clicked on the Icon of the box because sometimes there is interesting 
information there but this other place was not as printer friendly, chopping 
off the end of every line without giving me the option to scale the size of 
the picture to fit the 8 1/2 x 11 paper in my HP 895Cxi like some other 
places do ... I don't know the technical how this accomplished only that some 
places do but most do not.

Well hello ... an IBM site that is not compatible with AOL 5.0 ... a first 
for me.  AOL uses a variant of IE.  Does this mean that IBM is not interested 
in AOL's how many million customers, or that just as the 400 strengths 
sometimes get overlooked by IBM marketing, the IBM web site people also 
sometimes overlook compatibiliity with browsers beyond the market leaders?

I am referring to http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/introducing.htm

I put the place into my printer buffer & captured a bookmark, then while 
waiting on the blue bar in lower right corner to say it was finished, I was 
in my AOL Favorite Places (bookmarks) rearranging latest places into a new 
folder labeled "IBM 'new'  names as of 0-10" when up pops a Macromedia offer 
of Flash 5.0 locking me out of everything else until I respond to it & NO is 
not an acceptable input, so now I am locked so I cannot even close it with 
the X.  I have run into this before with places not compativle with AOL 5.0 
or my Ultra VGA Crystal Scan 1024 NI monitor, but it is a first for IBM.

Will we now need Flash to talk to IBM sites, or is this a marketing deal like 
IBM's promotion of M$ stuff?  I had to d-install Direct-X a month ago because 
it was interfering with my DOS games.

I agree that a new name with nothing else is a waste of the shareholder 
money, and further threatens to erode the base of IBM users.

As for marketing strategy, I seem to remember an ad in the last month or so 
that trumpeted 840 benchmark advantages, although was this ad preaching to a 
choir or reaching out to significant new audiences?  I also saw mention in 
the AS/400 trade press that IBM planned to go after various ads from 
competition that tell lies about IBM ... I have not yet seen any of those 
ads.  

For example, Oracle has a TV ad about how their DB is used by more businesses 
than any other, when in fact this is only true if the bigger market share DB 
is redefined by Oracle as not being a DB, so there was the prediction that 
IBM was going to do some ads that compared IBM DB to Oracle DB in both 
capabilities & market share, but I have not seen any of that yet.

> From: Tom Daly

>  The most amazing thing to me is that the iSeries 400 now shares its name
>  with a line of IBM's ThinkPads.  Actually, I think the ThinkPads have been
>  renamed to xSeries so I guess they are not actually sharing the name.
>  However, until this recent announcement, there was an iSeries that I 
believe
>  was at the lower end of IBM's ThinkPad product line.
>  
>  Can you just picture a B.P. trying to sell an executive on the idea of
>  running his/her business on an iSeries 400 when the executive just 
purchased
>  an iSeries 1200 (ThinkPad) for the kids to use at school?

That is a more serious error ... IBM should have a data base of names they 
have used in the past for other products & not play musical chairs with the 
names ... this name used to mean this but now it means that.

However, a lot of executives thought they could run their business on a PC 
when WinTel was in its infancy & instead of telling them they were idiots, M$ 
scrambled to make it possible.

>  Why not put the cash to work pointing out how IBM technology is better than
>  (let's say) Wintel?  Hmmm, IBM?  Quit running Intel Inside ads and run ads
>  for IBM technology.  Don't you want to sell your technology?  Or maybe 
you'd
>  rather ramp up your sales of your competitors technology while you charge
>  higher and higher prices on fewer and fewer sales of your technology?   

I suspect that various IBM decisions take a while to percolate through the 
staff that implement stuff, and that IBM is not the monolithic organization 
we ever thought it was ... just like COMMON had to introduce IBMers who had 
figured out how to do stuff (on say MAPICS) to IBMers who did not know it was 
even possible (on some S/3x), we will have a similar responsibility in the 
future to introduce IBM technology to IBMers who are selling IBM's 
competition.

> From: Chuck Lewis
>  
>  My friend Kelly Schmotzer, who is the Marketing Manager for 
> Domino for AS/400, 
> she was reminding me of all that things that are delivered for free
> on AS/400 like WAS Standard is a free product with AS/400.  
> The HTTP function is free and easy to setup on AS/400.  
> IBM supplies a POP3 mail server in OS/400 to do e-mail, 
> if we want to upgrade to Domino it is low cost
> and it WORKS very well on AS/400 
> - DB2 for unlimited users  is integrated with OS/400. 
> Not to mention security, management, backup, etc.... FOR FREE!!!!.  
>... and that it is all  integrated and tested before ever shipping.

>  We all know the AS/400 is a GREAT box, but others don't.

And why don't others ... shouldn't IBM marketing do a better job of 
communicating this?  I'm seeing a lot of IBM promotion for Web Sphere & Net 
Commerce & other products in which there is a list of what comes with this 
stuff, much of which is on the above list.  Does this mean that if we already 
have IBM OS/400 and we want  the improved internet capability that Web Sphere 
etc offers, we do not have to pay full price?  The review of Web Sphere in 
yesterday's www.pcmag.com mentioned a whopping price compared to M$ 
competition with zero mention of what comes native to our OS.

> From: Stone, Brad V (TC)

>  I think a better question would be can a small to medium sized business
>  _afford_ a 24-way server.  I'd guess no.

I think it was JT on another thread that said that while the AS/400 is price 
competitive with M$ & UNIX & other platforms in the medium to large sized 
business for what they all do, this was not ture for small business.
  
>  I think we should focus on the things like this that IBM does.  They're
>  doing it for a reason.  And that is to draw new customers.  I hope it 
works.

Let's hope that is the reason.  
Being pro-active is more constructive than some alternatives I could name.

I agree that the marketing mantra that works in today's world is to say
NEW IMPROVED SOAP in which you need a microscope to figure out what is 
different, but such a large mass of people buy into it, that it is a 
neccessary marketing stategy, but putting NEW on the label is as ineffective 
as TV reruns of LIVE, without some marketing to tout whatever it is they are 
pushing.

>  I think another reason that they want to "rebrand" it is because a lot of
>  non-400 gurus know of the AS/400, and don't think very highly of it.  Only
>  because of a lack of understanding.  But, I can just see it on the
>  comp.sys.unix/hp/nt newsgroups now..
>  
>  Post: "Hey!  did you see the new iSeries from IBM!  Looks killer!"
>  Reply: "Man, that's just the old AS/400.  
>  Why would I want a machine that uses flat files for a DB?"

What are the popular alternatives to flat files & can the AS/400 DB handle 
them?

I like flat files, but I have also worked with some EDI files ... variable 
length in which various delimiters define breaks between fields & there is an 
infinity of both record types and field types, in which the codes in the 
front of a record tell us which family of rules applies to this record, and 
codes in the front of a field tell us the functionality of the field - data 
type, etc. and we do not know until we read a record what kind of record it 
is going to be.  I had EDI software that converted this to IBM flat files so 
I could deal with it using my experience, but still, programs processing this 
stuff had to use humongous case statements based on the definitional codes 
"What was that record / field we just read?"  Forget about accessing the 
records in anything other than sequential order.

I had always thought that this EDI design was totally alien to Relational 
Data Base theory ... is RDB passe' & some new theory replaced it?  Or is my 
exposure to these EDI files, not what people referring to by non-flat files?

> From: Don in DC

>  if today's MMU is correct, we should see some kinduva media blitz..
>  
>  Hopefully IBM will get the picture this time, but so far today I've not
>  heard much and I would have expected a web cast or something!

Can we expect that IBM tracks participation in their web casts etc. to know 
which promotional channels are preaching to a choir & which are reaching out 
to potential new audiences?

PS. I read your State of Midrange on www.wash-midrange.org ... the 3rd & the 
earlier ones ... great going there & please keep them coming in future years.

>  Geezuz, will someone tell IBM that there's some bugs on their web page
>  please....I'm going through the registration functions for the myiseries
>  and getting download errors, sql errors, blank screen errors...  I'm using
>  netscape 4.7...  Let me guess, they gave this to a business partner to
>  develop...:)

It was only last week or so the new domains were registered.  Don't tell me 
these sites were created in a week, which did not allow much time for 
testing.  Perhaps what we are seeing are really Alpha or Beta sites, in which 
IBM did not tell the choir we were expected to do the testing, and part of 
the test is whether we can be responsible enough to tell IBM what the 
problems are without some big mouth telling the mass media that there is egg 
in IBM face.

> From: Don
>  
>  Bill,
>  
>  these weren't browser errors, they were NET.DATA SQL errors...:)  
>  Already faxed them up...

>  Bill.Steadman wrote:
>  
>  > The site is working just fine for me on IE5.5 and Netscape 4.75.

What is the fax number?
Ruben probably also could use it.

> From: Dan Bale
>  
>   When you register, you use your email address as a login ID.  
>   Without telling you, IBM changes your email address to lowercase
>  and then enforces a case match when you try to login again!  
>  Both on this site and their redbooks PDF download site.

So we need a road map how to use the new IBM web sites without having lots of 
unwanted errors?

Al Macintyre  ©¿©
MIS Manager Green Screen Programmer & Computer Janitor of BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 
running on AS/400 V4R3 http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of 
Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical 
sub-assemblies
+---
| This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
+---