-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Alan Altmark wrote: > If you are a System z customer and want to evaluate a new solution, but > don't have the hardware resources to do so, discuss it with your BP or IBM > rep. There are often ways to get you what you need; it depends on your > needs. But if you don't ask, you don't get.
Sure, it's just that there's a considerable degree of bureaucratic overhead. Compare and contrast: Manager: you want to spend time doing what, and you need me to sign off? Does this need official project approval? How will you bill your time? and IBM Rep: Sure, we can work up a demo of X, if you know ahead of time exactly what X is and how it might help make a sale down the line. v. Dev/Admin: Hm, I've got a couple slow hours tonight while this (batch job runs / system installs / firmware burns ...), I think I'll load up X and check it out. (week or two of late nights later) Hey, boss, we could make use of this cool thing! Certainly, in my shop, several of our major initiatives started out as skunk works projects. I can't imagine it's all that different elsewhere. In essence, I argue IBM is missing the chance to have us skilled, keenly interested engineers act as internal sales and marketing for you. I mean, we do that already, but there's a world of difference between being able to *show* your boss a working solution, v. just attempt to sell them on a possibility. Further, we ourselves often might not know ahead of time what will come out of some experimenting with things. - -- Pat -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAkr6SoUACgkQNObCqA8uBswi7wCgjSZ9YzW2GgeO70Wh43AAgJeV CJkAnjRgMrr8G5HZ93a+OL42+w3sWXsi =xQsm -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390