Bill Fairchild wrote: >It is my opinion that they will also dump their hardware business the day it >no longer is profitable.
Another thing to keep in mind, that as a product line declines, the costs to support that product line must also decrease, or the remaining customers must bear an ever increasing burden until a breaking point is reached and even the most conservative customers conclude they need to jump ship. If for example, the number of customers for CICS licenses starts to decline, you can expect changes at Hursley Park. Some of the greybeards will be shown the door, replaced with younger people at half the cost. At some point, more and more support and development work will be shipped to cheaper locations (India, China, etc.). And of course, customers will be asked to pay more. And enhancements will slow down. Eventually there will be a death spiral when customers are leaving the platform at such a rate that IBM can't squeeze their people or their customers any more. It is then that they will put the plug, like HP did with the 3000 product line. Or they might be convinced to make it open source like Linux and thereby gain community support. John ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
