IBM Comments
Mark A. Stevens
> >From: "Mark A. Stevens" <xm...@UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU>
>...
> >Only if they send you one copy of each program product you ordered. I
> >ordered VMMAP and VM/RTM and just received eleven copies of each. It
> >took four boxes to hold it all. I called my SE, Friday night and she
> >hadn't returned my phone call, yet. She's probably "at a customer
> >site" today.
> >Board of Governors Universities VMSHARE: ECE/MARK
>Can you identify the marketing rep. or branch office which supports
>you? I would like to call this to their attention.
Nancy Friedland, Systems Engineering Manager
Juan A. Doubrechat, Marketing Representative
Karen Powers, Systems Engineer
GET, IBM, Chicago, IL, USA
--
Mark A. Stevens Phone: 708-534-0200
Systems Programmer Internet: xm...@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
Educational Computing Network BITNET: xm...@ecnuxa.bitnet
Board of Governors Universities VMSHARE: ECE/MARK
Richard A. Schafer
> >From: Steve Moore <SWMGR%MIAMIU...@cmsa.Berkeley.EDU>
> >Dfsort/CMS 5664-325 was removed from HESC group 1-A1 in the October
> >1991 HESC list. I am curious if there are plans to include Dfsort/CMS
> >5684-134 in the future.
>Unfortunately this is one of those several products for which we have
>been unable a get the product manager's approval for HESC listing.
>The answer to your question is therefore, "not now."
> Fred Dwyer
> IBM ACIS
Fred, I hope you realize that this kind of response by the product manager
makes us *very* uneasy. Now that IBM seems to be changing version numbers
almost as frequently as they used to change release numbers on products,
this kind of response makes a customer worry about getting dependent on a
product when you can announce a new version, not on the HESC, and then quickly
drop support for the old version.
I for one can assure that product manager that there are definitely
competitive products on the market, and that this kind of response would
probably increase my likelihood of purchasing the non-IBM product. I'm
certain that Syncsort, say, is much happier to see DFSort/CMS not in the HESC
any longer, since it gives them a much better chance of making the sale. More
than once we've gone with an IBM product that was technically inferior
(and DFSort/CMS V1 was certainly that) largely on the basis of cost break
we could get from the HESC. If the IBM product now has to be purchased with
regular educational prices, we're much more likely to pay closer attention
to the competitive products. Where we've gotten messed around with by IBM
putting one version on the HESC and the next not, the non-IBM product will
get an even *better* chance.
>
> >Only if they send you one copy of each program product you ordered. I
> >ordered VMMAP and VM/RTM and just received eleven copies of each. It
> >took four boxes to hold it all. I called my SE, Friday night and she
> >hadn't returned my phone call, yet. She's probably "at a customer
> >site" today.
> >Board of Governors Universities VMSHARE: ECE/MARK
>Can you identify the marketing rep. or branch office which supports
>you? I would like to call this to their attention.
While Mark's situation sounds like a screw-up at whatever PID is called these
days (ISMD? It's still made in the dark :-), we once made the mistake of
accepting a gift by IBM of some 25 RTs and ordering software for all of them
from the HESC. Since IBM seemed to have no way of allowing us to order only
a single copy of CADAM (for example) with right to copy to the other 24
machines, we eventually were hit with what I usually referred to as the 1000
cubic feet of manuals, as 25 copies of the entire documentation set and
distribution media showed up by the truckload.
We ended up throwing out almost all of those manuals, at a tremendous waste
of materials, time, and energy. Here again I describe the DEC CSLG as a
better model: We get one CDROM with the distribution media, and perhaps some
online documentation. If we want to actually order 1 or more paper copies of
the manual sets, we can do so, at a separate price. While this may not
matter nearly as much for the VM groups, where a site may well not order more
than one copy of the software, when you get into the workstation groups,
where we might order many licenses to get one for each machine, this is a
*much* better idea. I absolutely shudder to think what would have happened
if we'd ordered software to run on all 200 of our Sun workstations from IBM:
I wonder if the building would have contained it all!
Richard