I was just thinking while reading Marcia's post quoted below that what she said made a lot of sense. Then I noticed what could be a bias, as she works for IBM. Actually, what she said still makes sense. Is she taking over for Timothy Sipples?
The one thing about the whole Flex-ES thing that really bothers me is that IBM would cut off their support for it before announcing the replacement. There are vague things said that what is coming will be great, but nothing concrete. Meanwhile, if your contract was at the end of its 3 years, your screwed. Why not wait a year, and cut off the Flex-ES after the new product or whatever new program is announced and out. It would be nice if IBM would address these issues. This really is a good point for Phil Payne to jump in. I have always valued his opinions. Much of what he has said in the past about what is coming for new models of CPU has come true Eric Bielefeld Sr. Systems Programmer 414-475-7434 Milwaukee, Wisconsin ---- Marcia Harelik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Software margins are higher than hw margins. Any software that IBM sells, > not just mf sw, will yield more profit than selling hw. IBM is certainly > not acting like a company that wants to divest itself of a product line > such as the mainframe. Acquisitions like Candle, Vanguard and Consul > bolster the mf sw portfolio. New technology such as the specialty engines > of zAAP and zIIP demonstrate support of the platform. And IBM's fairly > recent (in the last 5-7 years) entry into the tools market does not > indicate complacency or a step back. Even CA, HP and Oracle are actively > supporting either existing mf boxes or experimenting with comparable > technology. > > We may be talking about two different things. The IBM business model, and > the future of the mf. Clearly, IBM owns the most market share of mfs. And > IBM wants to optimize profits in the mf space. Some of its actions to > optimize profits may appear to others as a "killing off" of some aspects. > But the future of the mf---as a mixed workload server with 5/9 > availability and high RAS--is strong and long. > > > Marcia Harelik > IBM > Market Management/zSeries and Linux Software > US, Canada, Latin America > Austin, Texas > 512-380-9680 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
