I don't pay much attention to IBM's marketing practices so I can't opine knowledgeably, but I offer this counter, a story I'm sure I've told here before: Some years ago my oldest son got interested in learning mainframes. (I think he must have heard me rant too often about my increasing job security, due to colleges ignoring mainframes and thus making old fogies like me less and less replaceable even as our salaries keep rising.) So I started asking around: Where might I rent a couple of mainframe IDs on a commercial data center, and how much might I pay for it? I figured I'd start coaching him in the basics, and see how far his interest went.
I didn't make a big campaign of it, but I called here and there for a few weeks. My questions must have gotten around, because one evening I got a call from someone at IBM with a very direct offer: If I would contact my local university and get them to run a few classes in mainframes - almost any relevant class - the university would rent space at a data center and IBM would ~give~ me two accounts that I could use to teach my son. Heck, I could teach a class or two myself. I called NC A&T State U, where I'd worked a couple years. Couldn't arouse any interest. Could be IBM isn't marketing themselves very strenuously. Could be they're not losing market share and don't need to. I don't know. But it sounds to me like they're doing ~something~ at any rate. But as far as I can tell, the colleges have this notion that mainframes are out of date, and can't get out of that mindset or notice the facts. --- Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313 /* In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth — only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair. -CS Lewis in _The Case for Christianity_ */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Tom Brennan Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2020 11:54 When I bought my Yamaha piano in 1989, I heard a story that Yamaha had been supplying free pianos to universities for years. It was more than them just being nice, they knew that someone practicing every day on the school grand piano would likely go on to buy one, or be the decision maker for an orchestra, night club, or whatever. I always thought that was super smart of them. What I always thought was rather dumb, is that IBM doesn't do similar with educational use of all their software. And that's just copied bits ... no wood, metal, delivery, tuning, etc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
