RE: ibm i development budget -- MIDRANGE-L

Pete,

Don't hold back now. Don't sit on the fence. Tell me
what you really think of my article. Apparently
denial isn't just a river in Egypt. ;-)

For those wanting clarification on the budget numbers
I quoted (obtained from some unimpeachable sources in
IBM - who strangely probably would be impeached if
their identities were known) the $28 million that was
left last year was for total i5/OS development &
maintenance. Barely enough to keeps the lights on in
Rochester. You've heard from others who have
mentioned the place isn't what it used to be. Many of
the developers and some of the managers have gone.
Several on this list once used to inhabit those
hallways in Rochester. I'm not suggesting they all
left because their jobs were eliminated, or because
they saw the writing on the wall, but that's true in
some cases.

As to whether there was any overlap and cost savings
with the merging of i + p. I'm sure there will be
some savings on the hardware side, but I was talking
about the i5/OS budget. Ever since the S/38 "our"
system has been defined by software, not hardware.
And there is NO overlap between the OS/400 and AIX
development budgets. The money has either been
chopped or siphoned away from OS/400. Much of it
wasted on the now canned Linux based "Blue Machine".

Paul Horn (Senior VP of R&D) quoted a figure of around
$500 million a year for maintenance of an operating
system as justification for IBM pulling out of
operating systems. If he figured you needed $500
million a year, how much do you think Rochester can
achieve for OS/400 with $28 million? If IBM are
serious about enhancing "i" they're going to have to
check down the back of the couch for a bit more spare
change.

You've seen yourself that a lot of what is in V6R1 is
what IBM HAD to put in there to keep things going for
a while. For example, IPV6 support and data
encryption capabilities (mandated by the desire to
still be eligible for government business). Plus the
money spent to let it run on the Blade hardware. If
IBM are serious about enhancing "i" where's the list
of future enhancements we can look forward to? Who's
in charge of delivering these enhancements? Where's
the budget for them?

Back in the good old days of OS/400 development IBM
used to brag about there being 2,500 developers.
Maybe they'd like to brag about the current figure -
or has it suddenly become IBM Confidential?
Just how do you expect an unknown operating system
named "i", with no name recognition, no advertising
budget and a pathetically inadequate development
budget to compete in the marketplace with AIX & Linux?
It won't.

Remember there are Five Stages of Grief: Denial,
Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Some of
us are just a little further along in that process
than others.

...Neil

--- Pete Massiello <pmassiello-ml@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The article is really a crock of Sh1t. Why should
it jungle be promoting
the doom and gloom of the platform when it is NOT
true. Its Hype and media
sensationalism. It's what I refer to as what comes
out the back end of a
Bull.

Now, I can't argue any of those numbers as I don't
know that, but here is
something to think about. If IBM were to merge the
iSeries and pSeries
hardware wouldn't there be some overlap and shared
costs savings? Could
that be why the budgets are lower? They are using
the same PowerVM, FSP,
enclosures, power, racks, CPU, Memory, disk, etc.
Shouldn't the R&D for
these items now be less. Shouldn't this drive costs
down for us.

While I can't get into specifics, IBM has already
made public statements
about V7R1, and while in Rochester last year, they
had development plans
going out quite a few years.

With that all said, I know Neil for quite a few
years and I am surprised of
the negativity of that article. I am not knocking
Neil, just the article. I
believe this machine and operating system will be
here for a while.

Pete Massiello

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of
Tommy.Holden@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2008 9:13 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: ibm i development budget

FWIW i never hang my hat on anything said at IT
Jungle. too many times
have i looked at their viewpoint/stance and found it
to be total hogwash.
IMO no one should give them any credence whatsoever.
should they start
writing *good* credible articles i'll start
listening...

Thanks,
Tommy Holden

From:
"Steve Richter" <stephenrichter@xxxxxxxxx>
To:
"Midrange Systems Technical Discussion"
<midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date:
05/04/2008 08:42 PM
Subject:
ibm i development budget

Neil Palmer writes in ITJungle this week:
"...I really want to believe that there is a "next
20 years" as Mark said
at
COMMON, but looking back at the past year, we've
seen the i5/OS
development
budget progressively chopped from around $130
million to around $28
million.
..."

http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh050508-story04.html

Is that accurate? $28 million budgeted for working
on enhancements to the
base OS? Does that number include bug fixes and
PTFs?

With that kind of a limited budget, I question if
there will be a v6r2.

-Steve

--
This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
(MIDRANGE-L) mailing list
To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit:

http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/midrange-l

or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the
archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.

Neil Palmer, Cambridge, Ontario, Canada

(This account not monitored for personal mail,
remove the last two letters before @ for that)

__________________________________________________________________
Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail. Click on Options in Mail and switch to New Mail today or register for free at http://mail.yahoo.ca