On 6/2/2012 5:38 PM, Tony Thigpen wrote:
> but there is none to be made for doing so in
> writing even a new single RSECT.
How about this reason.
We have several customers running our software that are on pre-MP3000
machines that don't even support relative instructions. They still pay
us for support and that includes software upgrades.
Other vendors may not care about existing customers, but we do.
Almost all of these customers also can't upgrade their VSE. They fell
into the ESL trap with IBM many years ago and now can't get their budget
dollars back to get current because of the IBM monthly charges. As
faithful customers for many years, we do not want to kick them while
they are down just so we can do 'fancier' code.
There are two sides to this. You need to care about all of your customers, not
just those with no money. Dragging premier customers, with the latest hardware
and software, down to the level of the laggards is not fair to them. Customers
that continue to invest heavily in the platform must be rewarded for doing so.
IBM and ISV software should exploit the latest hardware and software features in
ways that provide these leading edge customers with the very best performance
and feature set possible lest they find an alternative (seemingly cheaper) way
to host their applications.
It's not just 'fancier' code. The productivity gains accrued by allowing
programmers to leverage new facilities are immense; new features can be
implemented in far less time giving customers more of they want for their
maintenance dollars; tremendous run-time performance savings can be realized by
leveraging new hardware and software features; today's memory rich (especially)
64-bit environments allow programs to do things only dreamed of twenty years
ago; and, so on...
The ESL problem is a unique problem for VSE that does not exist for MVS
customers. Nevertheless, the reality is that very, Very, VERY few customers
running severely back-level operating system releases are interested in
installing the latest and greatest release of 'Product X' -- even on VSE. Often,
such systems exist because the customer is in their 15th year of their 3-year
plan to migrate off the mainframe.
--
Edward E Jaffe
Phoenix Software International, Inc
831 Parkview Drive North
El Segundo, CA 90245
310-338-0400 x318
[email protected]
http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/
