RE: Wow.

[Scott Klement <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi again,

> I'd love to hear from those who do write for iSeries Network, Scott 
> Klement for instance.

Since I didn't know much about this topic, I send Joe's original message 
to Wayne Madden, our Editor in Chief, for a more "official" response to 
this issue.

Here's his response:

----------------------------------------------

Scott,

We are partnering with Microsoft on a roadshow about interoperability and 
choices, with the iSeries as the center of attention. In other words, the 
presentations, including the presentation from Microsoft will focus on the 
choices developers have in creating applications that take advantage of 
various technologies and leveraging your iSeries investment. This is not 
about migrating off of the platform and this is why they came to us. We 
designed the program content to focus clearly on giving iSeries developers 
more choices and in fact, the key point of this is to create an 
environment where developers and other iSeries professionals can be "yes" 
people, instead of "no" people.

What do I mean? Many times, when a department approaches your management 
team and says, "we found this cool windows application, or we want to 
integrate our data with this cool application", they get a "no" answer .. 
meaning, "we can't do that" or "we don't want to do that". Once you say 
no, then departments find a way to go around and get what they want and 
start to squeeze the iSeries and iSeries professionals. We want to have a 
healthy discussion about all your choices, including iSeries only and 
certainly iSeries - Windows development/integration technologies that give 
you the ability to say "yes" when faced with those challenges immediately. 
In fact, you can say "yes" and at the same time run those Windows 
applications on your iSeries or certainly make the iSeries the key 
platform involved in those solutions.

We're also going to be doing some very interesting things regarding the 
official IBM Roadmap, so watch for that as well.

Our role is to represent our readership. Our readers have iSeries family 
(AS/400 of course) systems. At the same time, our customers face all of 
these challenges, including the Windows challenge. We want the iSeries to 
be the central platform of choice for all business solutions -- it 
certainly can be! -- but at the same time we need to deliver education, 
etc. that assist in making choices on how to integrate technologies.

So .. are we in bed with Microsoft? Are we in bed with BCD? Are we in bed 
with IBM? Are we in bed with iTera? .. or any other vendor. No. Our market 
includes our readers and also IBM and third-party providers that bring you 
solutions and choices. It's good to be objective about the realities we 
face.

If anyone has any questions, they can certainly email me personally. You 
know I'm available and willing to talk. wmadden@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Wayne Madden
Group Publisher / Editor in Chief
IBM Technology Group
Penton Technology Media
(970) 203-2864