Re: Help Save the iSeries

[Pat Barber <mboceanside@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I WAS a Business Partner and I speak from experience. Yes, there are
some good ones left, but mostly very large organizations that have
little,
if any concern for small accounts(under $50,000). When the program
was a series of suppliers(Master VARS) and connected to small software
supplier(BPs), it worked just fine, but as always, IBM decided to "fix"
things. This resulted in hundreds of people being "released" from the
program that were supporting thousands of small accounts. All of these
small accounts were in affect, orphaned by IBM and their support folks
were left with no source of hardware or software upgrades.

If you are still wondering why the 400 succeeds to any degree,
loyalty is the only thing left.

The folks at IBM that came up with that brilliant idea came as close to
completely destroying the 400 program as you can get.

As a side benefit, they also managed to run hundreds of folks out of
business that were providing income directly to IBM with NO effort on
the part of IBM. Many of these same folks decided to NOT quit and they
started selling (guess who) software products and pc's.

All of my customers(that are left) are now getting used 400's from me
and software support is done by IBM Direct.

Now that's how you sell lots of new boxes........

My apology for ranting.... No more on this subject from me.




Andy Nolen-Parkhouse wrote:
>
> I would echo the thought that there are some good business partners out
> there.  However there is also a lot of consolidation going on.  IBM has
> made it clear to the partner community that they need to count on
> services for the bulk of their revenue.