🚀 go-pugleaf

In <5gp3ie$dhu@news.mr.net>, nau@ribs.ssesco.com (William Nau) writes:
>    
>Basically, the key problem is that IBM units are competing with each
>other.  They should be working together to promote each other.  Instead
>they seem willing to put the other unit out of business if necessary.

William:

You're right.  IBM unit should support one another.  I can't imagine
General Motor's units tearing each other down.  Ican't imagine
General Mill's food divisions knfing each other.  But these practices are
quite common at IBM division because they *ARE* allowed to operate as
autonomous units.

Four years ago, Steve Ballmer of Microsoft said that "IBM lacked vision."
When I first rrad that statement, I was irrateted.  After all, how could a company
with so much industry influence and so many software/hardware products
"lack vision."  

As time went on, I realized that Steve Ballmer may have been talking about
how loosely IBM units work together; that there is no continuity in executing
"corporate policy" from one unit to the next.

This was highlighted this week when a fellow OS/2 supporter posted
a rather sad recollection to bit.listserv.os2-l of just how muddied IBM Network Computer
strategy is.  The gentle psoted his account of a demo he attend where IBM
(he didn't know wich unit was conducting the demo) was pre-viewing its
first NC products.  The show was a disappoint.  

This is how is expained what happened:

Dave Bennett <dave000@ibm.net> writes:
>I attended a meeting at the local IBM site last Friday where they
>demonstrated their Network Computer. What a joke of a presentation.
>
>First of all, the unit will connect to AIX via an XWindow client, 3270 &
>5250 emulation is present. To run Windows applications you have to get a
>third party product called WinFrame... With this product in place, you
>can have 20 users run windows apps off a 200mhz Pentium Pro NT server
>with 200mb RAM... The kicker is that IBM then adds a piece to the
>puzzle, intercepting the video output from that server in the user
>session, converting it to X and then forwarding it to the Network
>Computer...
>
>The demonstrator didn't show the box actually running any java
>applications, just that "it would".
>
>The server for the NC can be any NT server, AIX, OS/400 or MVS
>environment.
>
>The actual Operating System of the device is a stripped down version of
>BSD unix.
>
>The only way OS/2 stations can participate is to browse into java
>environments, no direct support is planned. He made a point of stating
>that he did not use the word "OS/2" during his entire presentation.
>
>The tone of the presentation was a "what do you think?", "would you buy
>this?", "what do you think about java?" and "is this a choice you would
>make for your company?".
>
>I went there to find out why the two products I'd had on order since
>November were not available. The presenter said he could help with that.
>Another gentlemen pointed out that he too couldn't get product. The
>presenter said he could talk directly to the authorized vendor and get
>the ball rolling. The "authorized vendor" was sitting there. He said
>that IBM wouldn't deliver and couldn't give a ship date...
>
>Then the song and dance started about "this is a new product", etc.
>
>When I asked about what happened to the possibility of using OS/2 as the
>kernel since it already ran DOS & Windows applications as well as OS/2
>and java there was silence. I asked about it being cheaper for the user
>(they didn't have to buy the WinFrame product) and more efficient
>operationally. Nothing. This isn't even a possibility.
>
>Right now I have Sun JavaStations inhouse, running JavaOS and supporting
>what we need to do. (tn to our AIX box for legacy applications) It is
>giving us a platform to connect our past to the future (java) as we see
>it. (IBM may support JavaOS early next year.)
>
>IBM is so far behind the curve on this that it isn't even laughable.
>Bringing schlock like this into a public forum and then asking them if
>this was something they'd consider was an insult. All of the information
>I'd had from IBM up to this point had at least been reasonable sounding
>solutions. This box is a joke at best, and an admission by IBM that they
>haven't got a clue at worst.
>
>I like my RS/6000s, but if IBM thinks I'm going to live in the past with
>them and their attachment to Microsoft's unstable environment, they are
>crazy.
>
>The cost of their Network Computer, with 16mb RAM is around $600.
>However, they do not want you to purchase them, but lease them through
>IBM Credit for $35 a month. Then, as they release the next generation
>(figure out what people really want/need), the hardware could be swapped
>in and the lease upped to $45 a month.
>
>System management on these things are ridiculous. You have to go to the
>physical Network Computer and interrupt the boot process to get into a
>ROM program to set them up. You identify the TCP/IP address of the
>server, etc. Then it reboots.
>
>On the Sun JavaStations everything is configured from the server via a
>browser based management system. No need to every touch the actual
>JavaStation, making remote installation 
>particularly painless.
>
>I thought the main point of "network computers" was the reduced
>maintenance. Having to travel to each physical machine for configuration
>is not my idea of low maintenance.
>
>I think IBM has, as usual, really missed the boat on this one.
>
>Dave


How could anyone defend this IBM fiasco?

Lou Gerstner has made the NC a cornerstone of IBM's network-centric
computing model.  Somwhow, Lou's mandate got lost in the translation
to IBM's divisional general mangers.

How and why does this keep happening?  The NC will go the way of
the PowerPC, I fear!

Enough said.

-Kevin