State of the Midrange

By Don Rima

		Greetings again! Well it was one year ago that we debuted the "State of the Midrange" in the August newsletter, and again this year we continue the tradition. By the way, a reminder to our august throng that we also skip August for WAM meetings. So, what is the state of the Midrange? My fellow midrangers, I come before you to tell you that, in my opinion, the state of the midrange is becoming much less defined and more nebulous. But, alas, I don’t see it going bye-bye in our career's lifetime. Those of us that attended Lou Gerstner's presentation at Common in San Antonio several years ago, recall his statement of direction that there would be one hardware platform. Upon this architecture one would buy an operating system, load and go. No longer would there be a hardware identity. In short order, you’re going to hear about the Monterey Project. This is the merger of the Unix/AIX and OS/400 on one hardware platform not that OS/400 isn’t running a lot of C and Unix stuff under the covers already It was rumored that this same box would also support NT (imagine!), but that probably won't happen. And, in less than 4 years you may see the singular cradle to grave hardware architecture, snag your O/S dujour off the shelf, load and go forth and compute . And yes that also would include the S/390 big boys.
		The IBM marketing schema has gotten so bad that folks are even suggesting that IBM get people like Jennifer Aniston to pose with and endorse the box. In reply, I think IBM should just buy the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and have the pictures taken of the models posing with their favorite AS/400 model or perhaps they can get Jesse "the body" Ventura to pose with a 400 thereby denoting it as the "real man's server". After all, he IS the governor of Minnesota and lives right down the street from Rochester. Support folks are telling me off the record that 4.4 has a few points of performance impact/loss. Not surprising since it has to support most anything under the sun. But it's still the best most solid O/S out there and supported by some of the best folks in the labs you can ever want to find . That is as long as they stay there as there is still a major brain drain of senior talent and more folks that are ready to go just as soon as they’ve reached the highest number of benefit years for retirement. Also, you might find reading the stories on news400.com about Janet Krueger interesting. One can only hope that she's not the start of a major trend. The BLOB's are on the way. They'll debut this fall in the form of a HUGE PTF. And frankly, that's all you're going to get in the form of anything new this year as everyone wants to keep the platform stable through the Y2K curve. Look forward to February for V4R5 and some more goodies. Also, we'll have an announcement meeting on both the BLOB PTF and the V4R5 goodies coming to a user group meeting near you.
		IBM continues to preach that NT is the best thing since sliced bread and canned beer and the world is believing it. Problem is that the world is also smart enough to realize they can get much cheaper servers than IBM's. And face it, if you are stupid enough to put your company's core business applications on an operating system as flaky as NT, you're a sure bet to go for anyone's servers. And buy them they are. You may want to talk to your broker about buying some Sun Microsystems (SUNW) or Dell, Gateway or Compaq (DELL, GTW, CPQ) Caveat emptor applies. Speaking of caveat emptor: IBM still continues to ignore the end users when IBM business partners (BP) dump on them. For IBM to take a washing of the hands approach to companies that they are strategically allied with that documentably insist on shipping code that continues not only to not install correctly but not work as advertised is in my opinion a major disgrace. I can't begin to tell you some of the stories I've encountered in the recent years of people screaming at me about how they bought a package from BP-X and not only does it not work, the support people are incompetent and they will never buy a 400 again and wish like hell they hadn't now. It's too bad that IBM refuses to police their business partners for quality and further unfortunate the BP’s don’t police themselves! Fortunately for the life of our careers and our companies business success, I can also tell you that these dolts are in the minority of business partnership ranks. But that still is no excuse for allowing their actions. So, what can we depend on in '00? Well, education for one thing will be ubiquitous. It seems that everyone and his brother is getting on the midrange education bandwagon. And, with hardly anyone in school systems teaching midrange there's a lot of bucks to be made out there. This also means that you’re getting some of the better names in the industry (Paris, Massoglia, Gantner, Barsa, Sears, et al) doing the traveling education gig. This also means that we have options besides with script readers at the IBM high bucks education centers. The major names are where the rubber meets the road and can generally answer from real life experiences. Also, Common is coming to town next fall well, they're coming to Baltimore. We won’t be having a JAM ’00 as Common will have so much to offer and the dates are so close to when we have the JAM. And, frankly, your board of directors supports Common and thinks you'll have exposure to some of the best minds that the industry has to offer and you should plan now to attend. Checkout www.common.org for date information. But, that's in '00 in '99 we've got the best program for the JAM you'll see in a one-day event anywhere. Instead of the JAM, look forward to several one-day sessions like we were so successful with this past Spring with Charlie Massoglia. You are telling us that these intense topic specific day sessions are the best for you and that’s what we’re looking at. Please email any of us with your suggestions on topics! The new buzzword du jour is Domino. Frankly, after you're done with your Y2K and caught up on your other projects you need to start learning Domino. This is the way of the future. Learn it now. Finally, there's that farce that's being force marketed to create a super artificial demand in the midrange industry. Of course I'm talking about "certification". Frankly, in my book, midrange certification as it is currently implemented does not to me certify that a person really knows how to run a system or is a good programmer or anything else. Don't get me wrong, I'm pro certification PROVIDED that they really test that you know how to do more than know when to call your marketing rep and order more hardware! If, however, anyone thinks that the IBM midrange certification as it is currently written is on the same caliber as Microsoft or Novell's certification for their networks, then they're nothing short of absolutely stupid. Frankly, you're much better off spending your time and bucks learning domino. Besides, there's absolutely no training prep material for the IBM certs. I wish that we had the same caliber of educational resources for IBM certification training as MS and Novell have for theirs .but it's not going to be in my stocking this December 25th. Jeez, Don, you're down on the world. Nope. Not totally true. A year ago I said that the platform was a strong one, that you would have well paying jobs, at a good rate, supported by some of the best technicians and developers the labs had to offer. I still think so and that hasn't changed. I Think we can all look forward to a solid, profitable and fully successful year on our systems in '00 provided you don't have software from one of the BP's mentioned above. Java, should we take it seriously or is it another Pascal du jour and we should order another latte? Frankly I think the jury's still out and the answer depends on who you talk to. Right now, you may want to consider first learning C, then Java as it's an easier learning curve, then hey you can always get a job as a web developer on whatever platform you chose Nothing lost and it's good job security to have the flexibility. Who knows, you could even start your own consulting group and become a Business Partner with IBM...hopefully a good one. Looking forward to seeing you folks at THE JAM!