There are others.  But even if we had no competition, we still wouldn't
get the deal if we didn't support the customers to the expected level of
satisfaction.

The connection I was shooting for was between flying old airplanes and
updating IT for no operational benefit.

Based on the assembler listserv and the COBOL discussions here, I don't
think they are succeeding.  Even IEHMOVE is still around.

-----Original Message-----
From: Chase, John 
Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 1:55 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: 3490E cartridges

> -----Original Message-----
> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List On Behalf Of Schwarz, Barry A
> 
> That is a perfectly valid consideration.  But only one of many.  Since
> most of our products carry nine-figure price tags, I don't think we
> would sell too many in the future if customers didn't have faith we
> would continue to support them.

Just curious....  Who besides Airbus is your competition in the
commercial space?  Who besides Lockheed-Martin is your competition in
the military space?

> At that price, customers intend to use the product for decades (some
of
> our planes have been flying for more than 50 years) and they are not
> particularly interested in updating their IT equipment multiple times
> just to be fashionable.

I don't see a logical connection between buying modern airplanes and
running "obsolete" computing hardware.

> We are not the only company to do this.  I think it is one of the
major
> reasons IBM has spent so much effort maintaining a high level of
> backward compatibility stretching back from the z10 to the 360/40 I
used
> to program in college 40+ years ago.

But even IBM is trying to "retire" old code.

    -jc-

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