On Wed, 4 Apr 2007 08:37:57 -0500, Rick Fochtman wrote: on account of what Shane wrote: >>--------------------------<snip>------------------------- >>Like a few others here on the list I'm pretty sure IBM must have an >>emulation (simulation, whatever) product. Possibly just about to escape >>from the labs into public view. >> >>There is no way they can leave their own staff swinging in the breeze, >>regardless of their attitude to the rest of the world. Don't tell me the >>company that has all those smarts can't get it done if/when they want. >> >>One of the advantages of being "lost" in the wilds of Australia - I'm >>not privy to secrets, nor subject to NDAs, and it don't matter one iota >>if I'm wrong. >> >>I can theorise all I like ... :0) >-------------------------<unsnip>-------------------------- >Theories or not, I think that ALL the posts I've seen here today and >yesterday on this issue have some elements of validity and/or truth. In >a business shop, you don't drop a process without a replacement process >or a backward path; your customers may not be ready for upgrades or >revisions; any one of a number of reasons. > >Dropping the FLEX-ES program may be only the harbinger of something >better in the offing, but it leaves a number of ISV's twisting slowly in >the wind during the interrim period. IMHO, this is NOT a smart move. And >the loss of AMDAHL and HITACHI as effective competitors in the mainframe >market here in the U S of A could very well leave IBM open to government >action for monopolistic practices whether FLEX-ES is continued, replaced >or whatever. The whole area is a tangled web and the little guys, the >small ISV's, are the ones that will suffer the most. > >Time will tell, but I wish it would hurry up. ;-) I, too, wish it would hurry up . . . but wishing won't help much. IBM traditionally makes hardware announcements of that ilk around the May or September timeframe. Given that the FLEX-ES licenses expired last October and given that Early Support Programs are (lately anyway) often 6 months in duration... and given that May would be just over 6 months from that license expiration... well, one might surmise that a product announcement might come from IBM on, say, May 1st (unlikely as it is a holiday in many countries) or May 8th. But if I was going to be pinned to a date I would put it towards the end of May (22nd or 29th). (May 15th would make me wrong I suppose.) And that all presumes that there is a tiger behind all of that paper. IBM may, in fact, have nothing. (I don't have any inside information here in the wilds of Wisconsin. It is difficult to read the contents of the jets as they fly overhead, after all.) -- Tom Schmidt Madison, WI
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