I'm not Ed, but ... > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On > Behalf Of John Eells > Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2015 4:39 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: z/OS Platform Software Products on ... Tape? > > Ed, I have to ask: You are *directly* involved in software installation
Yes I was. > these days and you have used DVDs from IBM for z/OS platform product or > ServerPac installation? Never. > Tape sounds simple; I sort of miss the days when it actually was. But > media compatbility has fragmented in the tape market, we are not going > to support them all, and a lot of customers are going entirely tapeless. I agree that supporting all is unreasonable. But supporting the ones you still market and service, such as 3592, seems very reasonable to me. > What started this discussion within IBM in the first place is that a > small and dropping percentage of our customers are ordering products and > service on tape. The vast majority do not, it would seem, deem tape the > best option any more for one reason or another. Does the company no longer make a profit supporting us in the minority? > Also...receive from tape? I'd hope fewer people are using RECEIVE > processing for product installation every day, and for service it's hard > to beat a nightly production job that runs RECEIVE ORDER for simplicity, > keeping service on hand and HOLDDATA both dead current. "Set and forget." Not when our mainframe has no internet connection. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
