Charles Mills wrote: >Sorry. MSUs are *incredibly* important to some (most?) customers. They are a >major buy/no-buy decider.
Indeed. Other questions customers also asked to vendors (from what I know and found out over the years): - How easy is it to install? With SMP/E (increasingly important) or not? - Are RACF or ESM called for security? Is the z/OS security sufficient enough or are extra security checks needed? - Performance - can it distribute workload? CICS, MQ, etc. can do that for example. - Resource usage, beside MSU, how much memory/disk space/network resources are needed? - Do you need exits? Yes/No/Optional. - Support from n-2 to n+2 levels depending where you are now. (and of course the type of machine and ARCH level.) - If I find a problem, is it easy to report it and get a fix for that? - Can I easily move from a competitor to YOUR software? Can I fallback to your vendor until you sort yourself out? - etc. etc. etc. > Shipping the source is utterly out of the question, Of course, you have to be crazy if you give away your bread and butter source for all the greedy vultures on this planet. During my private work years ago, some of my clients want the source [1] for 'security evaluation' or something crappy like that. A simple 'no' as answer and moving on to the next customer resolved that quick. [1] - Years ago it was told to me that some z/OS vendors gave the source code of SVC routines to satisfy their client paranoia... But generally their statement of integrity is enough of course. Can management read Assembler source listings? >Seriously, thanks for your input. And thanks for your input too. It was an interesting thread to all of us here. Groete / Greetings Elardus Engelbrecht ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
