RE: Why i??? NEED YOUR INPUT -- MIDRANGE-L

IBM is the gold standard for support.

Once a call is open, there's no impatience on their part.
They often give you their direct line for follow up.
They call YOU back.
They take ownership of your issue.
Sometimes, I think they have more drive for a resolution than I do!
They will conference in a colleague or two, if need be, on the spot.

This is the kind of support you want when you've got a multi million or
billion dollar company relying on a computer for all its information
needs.

Bryan Burns
ECHO Outdoor Power Equipment
iSeries Specialist
Lake Zurich, Ill

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Aaron Bartell
Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 9:20 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Why i??? NEED YOUR INPUT

Hi All,

Was on a call with IBM and the YiPs team yesterday. They are looking
for
ways to liven up, and modernize, their message about the benefits of the
IBM
i. The cool thing is that the folks on the phone weren't your
traditional
marketing folks but people that have grown up with the machine and
actually
BELIEVE it is one of the best platforms for business today -
specifically
the IBM i OS.

Justin Porter, Brian May and myself (the YiPs on the call) gave personal
stories of our experiences with IBM i and why it has saved us time,
money
and accomplished business goals over our professional life on the
platform.
Our comments ranged from being able to trust the system to grow during
busy
seasons without interruption or increasing staff, to only having to
apply
updates based on business feature needs vs. security vulnerabilities, to
the
simplicity and efficiency of modular application development with
RPG+DB2+IBMi.

At the end of the conversation we realized that there are a lot of
believers
out there that could share similar stories to benefit the evangelizing
of
the platform. *So what is your IBMi success story? What is something
you
love about IBMi that you don't get with Microsoft or other OS vendor? *

Please note that I am going to direct the IBM personnel to this email
list
thread to gain insight on what people respond with. If it is possible,
please include your company name and your role.

Below are some points that I have come up with:
- I upgrade IBMi OS when I want to and not based on widespread security
vulnerabilities.

- My integrated-with-the-OS database (DB2) never needs to be restarted,
is
never corrupted, and is never unavailable - it just works. I am not a
DB
admin nor do I need to be because DB2 on IBMi just works.

- Having the simple, modular, integrated and time tested RPG language
allows
me to develop and deploy applications with ease and assurance.

- The word "reboot" isn't in my vocabulary. Restarting the machine
happens
so rarely that I sometimes forget my processes.

- I have two IBM i machines exposed to the internet and have never had
to be
concerned with them being infected by viruses, trojans, or other
malicious
wares because of the object level security built into the IBMi operating
system.

- I am able to manage all of the processes running on my system with a
great
amount of detail using the integrated Job Management capabilities of the
IBMi. This helps in getting the right jobs priority when they need it
so
daily processing continues to run smoothly. It also provides extensive
information about any given process so I can quickly trouble shoot
issues.

- With the integrated job logs I am able to get a snapshot of issues of
a
specific user/job should they arise.

- I never have to deal with "Remote Desktop max connection exceeded"
messages when working with IBMi. The integrated, promptable and time
tested
command line capabilities of the IBMi allow me to administer the machine
from anywhere with ease.

Aaron Bartell

Lead Developer

RPG-XML Suite (www.rpg-xml.com)