Sound Off with IBM

iSeries Town Hall Meeting, Fall COMMON, September 18, 2005

IBM Representatives:

Mark Shearer, iSeries general manager

Peter Bingaman, vice president, iSeries marketing

Bill Donahue, vice president, worldwide iSeries sales

Vijay Lund, vice president, server and storage development, IBM Systems and Technology Group

Maureen McGuire, vice president of marketing and strategy, IBM Systems and Technology Group

Walt Ling, manager of iSeries technical support

Jim Herring, director of product management and business operations

Joyce Bordash, director of iSeries channel marketing

Kareem Yusuf, WebSphere representative

Mike Lawrie, Domino Representative

As is traditional at COMMON, Al Barsa, of Barsa Consulting, got to speak first.

Al Barsa: I'm not going to comment any further about V5R3. It continues to be the most stable release of OS/400--or whatever you're calling it this week--ever. And there are no "howevers" today. I do want to applaud IBM for its stellar support of customers in the Gulf Area. IBM has provided . . . support for customers both with and without contractual support. A hand to the IBM Rochester team.

Now that that's over, we can talk about the fact that the HMC sucked in the beginning. Today it's over-priced, user-unfriendly, closed, proprietary. Moreover, iASPs don't work well in one minute, releases may prove to be unfixable.

Mark Shearer: Did everybody hear that? Jim Herring, I think Al was directing that toward you.

[Laughter.]

Jim Herring: So if you can imagine developing a set of software to re-implement, basically, single-level store on a smaller scale, has not been the easiest thing in the world. And I actually agree, in part, with Al's comment about ASPs being challenging to deploy, especially, as I would say, in the large. They do work extremely well in some situations. We are working very hard to extend the capabilities of ASPs so that they're more applicable. I know one of the biggest areas we have, in respect to ASPs, to work on is the area of application resilience, because that is one of the areas, I agree with Al, it falls a little short on. ASPs are in the future roadmap for iSeries. We have a significant investment going forward in high availability function within our next operating system release, and operating system releases after that. I look forward to your comments on usability Al and seeing how we can integrate those concerns into our product set with our next operating system release and the one after that.

Al Barsa: What about HMC?

Jim Herring: Alright, so I'm glad Vijay Lund is up here with me. Before I hand it over to Vijay, we have made, I think you'd agree, tremendous strides in the HMC since it was initially implemented. We have a tremendous amount of function implemented as to be able to manage multiple partition across multiple systems. I would say, we see this adopted especially in our larger customer shops, and they appreciate the functionality it gives them above and beyond what they had before. I would agree that we have some work to do in making it more deployable in mid-market and small customers, as partitioning and Linux and AIX become more prevalent in those spaces.

Vijay Lund: We have lots of work to do, lots of work to do. We've started down this journey using the lessons that we've learned with our mainframes. There's a fair amount of work to do. What we'd like to do going forward is come up with a common management layer such that we can access and manage all our resources in the Systems Group.

Jim Herring: I would add one thing. [He discussed a BOF meeting on Monday night.]

Mark Shearer: Al, I would encourage you to talk with Vijay Lund later.

Paul Dunn: What's on the roadmap for hardware technology for the iSeries?

Vijay Lund: So we've learned a lot from the investment that we made with the Sony Corporation, Toshiba corporation, and IBM as part of our magic chip that we will put into the next generation of PlayStations. So let me clear up some misconceptions first. Cell, the way we look at it, is really a booster function, an accelerator function. That's how we look at this going forward into our server space, into our system space. It will find applications in servers, it will find applications in storage. . . There is a lot of money coming forward from the gaming divisions.

Paul Dunn: More specifically, if we've got Power5, and Power5+, and previously we heard about Power6.

Mark Shearer: Tell us about what you've got in your pocket.

Vijay Lund: So I better stand up. So we've got Power5 today on iSeries and we're very proud that it's doing well. In the development laboratories, of course, we've got a new version of Power5 that we call Power5+ in the next technology. I won't be very technical, but it's in the next generation of technology in 90 nanometer mode. It's up and running, it's ready to go whenever we want it to go. And beyond that, we've been actively working in the laboratory designing one of our most ambitious processor system programs that we call Power6. And what I have here in my hand is the smallest and most powerful computer that we're going to build with this in the coming years. So much to come. We're on that track.

We're focusing quite a bit on availability. People have said to me, "Vijay, how can a processor ever fail, in an iSeries or a zSeries?" You have to understand that I grew up in mainframes, that's where I started my schooling and my education. I say to them, we're working very hard on making sure this chip, that's more than a processor, never fails. And this chip is no longer a processor. It's a system. It's the entire system that we've packaged on this chip. So there are many things that can go wrong, and we're working many aspects of this, as first of all to drive high reliability and high availability.

We're taking a tremendous amount of cost out, a tremendous amount of cost. So you can see, most of our previous processor programs, they were a lot bigger [physically] than this. This is going to have a tremendous amount of power, and I chose to bring this with me to give you a feel for where this business is going for us. And of course most important, we'll never let up on the performance pedal. You'll have lots and lots and lots of performance. So come anyone, anytime, we will not be compromised. So we will give you the performance you need, in many different flavors, we'll give you virtualization, you can carve it up any way you want, and you'll have great, great, great systems.

Paul Dunn: It's been an absolutely fantastic system, server, OS.

(Someone from something called the Fashion Institute, our apologies for not catching your name): I 'm going to go back to Craig's session this morning. He talked a little bit about naming. And when we talk about some of the goals to simplify. Simplify doesn't mean naming everything the same name, like WebSphere, because as a customer it becomes more and more difficult to actually figure out what product we need to buy. And we would really like to buy the products, so the i is simple, we like that. But could we make an effort to simplify some of the names? It looks like this new family, the Workplace, is going to be just as confusing as the naming of WebSphere, where everything seems to have that name, there was really no [way to know] what the product is underneath it, or where it fits into our environment.

Maureen McGuire: We have a lot of work inside of IBM that we need to do around naming. As you can imagine we announce of thousands of products every year, and we need to get much better at figuring out how to make those names meaningful in the marketplace and not be stepping on each other. But, that's difficult because when you're a company like IBM, and I'll just be very frank with you, we have to take care of the intellectual property on those names, and we really do. One [of the problems] in the marketplace is, every time you want to name something, there are half a dozen companies in some niche in the IT industry who own the name. And then you have to take more complex steps to try and protect the name, or to try and name it differently than someone else. Because we're a target. We're a target for people to come after us if there is any similarity with between names. It actually has made it more and more difficult for IBM to come up with a naming structure that fits across the board. Inside IBM we have a group of people who are, across IBM, looking at our brand management, and part of that is our naming strategy and how we go about it. So there's a lot more work to be done there.

I think we need to simplify our names, we need to have smarter, sexier names. I think we have to get away from names that have six suffixes to them before anyone can understand what they are. And so I totally agree with you. Part of simplifying IT is also simplifying communications about IT. And we have a big job to do inside IBM.

Peter Bingaman: From my perceptive, I would actually go a step further. We're absolutely horrible at naming. Absolutely horrible. We are. I think you have seen already the simplicity that we are doing in our marketing, the simplicity that Bill [Donahue] laid out in his sales efforts, where we're building more simplicity into products, we're looking at the offering structure. You're going to see simplicity come to everything we do, including the naming in the next year or so.

Kareem Yusuf: I can definitely say I have spent more sleepless nights around naming of products than most people in Software Group, and I do appreciate the challenges. But one of the key things to understand, with WebSphere in particular, is how that brand actually evolved. It essentially evolved from being a single product name around an application server to become a brand name for a platform in software. And that has caused a lot of challenges and confusion.

What we've done this year, and we had some major announcements last week, to really drive a lot of clarity in our naming. If you look at the WebSphere platform as it stands with all the Version 6 offerings, I personally drove together the names to a very simple format. WebSphere, the brand, which refers to integration software, followed by a functional description, what does this piece of software do for you. So we have WebSphere application Server. We have a WebSphere Portal. We have a WebSphere Process Server. To give you an example, we had a product called WebSphere Business Integration Connect. What does that do? It's actually focused on partner management from a B2B perspective. So we renamed it, with the new version this year, WebSphere Partner Gateway. So I hope that as you look through the product portfolio, you'll see this clarity really coming to the fore.

The other thing we decided to do with our announcements around SOA, is create a simplified way for software to support SOA. Because WebSphere, Tivoli, Rational--they are not consumable entities. So one of the things we launched last week was the IBM SOA Foundation. And this brings together the core software that we have that we can bring to bear to support of developing SOA in the context of a single consumable entity. So now you can have a one-point conversation you want to buy in to exploit, leverage, the IBM SOA Foundation, and then you have functional pieces that make it up.

Mike Lawrie: As Kareem just mentioned, with the Workplace line of products, we tried to take the Workplace product followed by a functional description. So Workplace Messaging, Workplace Instant Messaging, Workplace Documents. We got so excited about this idea we went and started renaming the Domino stuff. And for those of you that are Domino customers, that's pretty much akin to treason. So Lotus Sametime became Lotus Instant Messaging. And of course we explained to everybody that it's really just Sametime with a new name. After realizing that it took a secret decoder ring to understand what we're talking about, we've now gone back to Notes and Domino, Quickplace, Sametime. We went back to our old product names around Notes and Domino, which is actually was pretty good because most of my wardrobe has that stuff written on it, so I get to wear all those clothes again. And then sticking with a rather simplified name around Workplace.

So huge apology. We reinvented branding three times this year, got it wrong all three times. But it is very high priority for us moving forward.

Kareem Yusuf: Please keep the feedback coming. We do recognize we need to make our portfolio simpler to understand.

(An end user, we missed her name, apologies again): This is a request to clean up Passport Advantage. It's a nightmare. It is unbelievable difficult to get anything out of Passport Advantage. We tried to get new releases of software, we can't get new releases of software. The newest releases aren't on the Web site. My op supervisor says, I know you want this loaded, we can't load it. We can't get it. And its extremely difficult. We'd like it simple.

Kareem Yusuf: I actually like this question because I can give you very positive news on this one. I shared this story with Frank just before we started this session. I had one of the people working for me who focuses on the User Experience actually go through what I term User Experience. … So we went through Passport Advantage. We also ordered software, and we were appalled by the experience. The good news is that we have been driving . . . to improve not just the your out of the box experience when you order software and it comes in a box, but also the Passport Advantage. And you should begin to see the impact of some of those key changes . . . As a simple example, even the names of the files, when you go to download it, bear no relationship with the product that they represent. And we'll see those changing.

Mark Shearer: Sounds like we agree we have work to do with Passport Advantage.

Don Rima: Did I understand you right saying that iSeries was going to be the single focal point of IBM's server strategy going forward?

Maureen McGuire: I think what we said was . . . So I often make an analogy to when we came out with all of the eServer strategy five years ago. We said we were going to think about all the mainframe inspired technology. We were going to take all of the good things from the mainframe, and all of the other good technology . . . we had across the board, and build them into our products, and I think we did that over the next five years.

I think this time what we're saying, there's a ton of learning that we've got through iSeries, which is hitting the sweet spot of the market. And we're going to take that learning, of what it is to have an integrated value proposition, and really talk about our systems as business platforms, and make sure that we take the best of that and apply it to the rest of IBM in our Systems Agenda going forward.

Don Rima: I think I'm one of the few people who have two RS/6000s and three AS/400s and a slew of Intel stuff sitting in his house. An occupational hazard . . . What's interesting is to come to a place like COMMON, and we see multiple session and handouts and presentations on AIX on iSeries, AIX in an iSeries LPAR. AIX, AIX, AIX. If you go to pSeries presentations, they'll be damned if they're going to mention anything with OS/400, i5, or whatever you're going to call it next week. They have absolutely no intention of doing anything like single level storage . . . Where are we going in terms of, iSeries in the future, iSeries technology, the stuff that we're doing in hardware, and where IBM is going . . . They're definitely not in the same boat.

Peter Bingaman: There's a huge market for systems out there. It's enormous, it's like $380 billion. Today the way that market is defined for the most part, is Wintel, Linux, Unix, and mainframe. Those are the category of server. There is no obvious category out there from a marketing perspective, that might be called, for lack of a better statement, integrated business systems, which is really what we are. We believe there is a new cat4egory of computing that's going to be start to emerge. We've been part of it for decades, and we're starting to see more of it come together because integration is becoming that much more important. We're seeing us do it, for hardware, software and middleware. You're starting to integration happening from with SAP going from the application layer to middleware. So this integration is beginning to happen.

The bigness of this market leaves plenty of room for us to create this new category of server computing called the iSeries, and allowed us to compete in our respective markets--quite honestly there's plenty of room for x, p, z, i respectively. We found that in our view of the world right now . . . We think that all the opportunities that overlap between iSeries customers and the AIX opportunity and pSeries customers, only four percent of our customers overlap. That is four percent of iSeries and pSeries customers overlap with each other. It's very small component. It's a huge and enormous opportunity for us to both go out and grab the market. So we're collaborating in how we do that. We're building an integration story.

Mark Shearer: The way that I look at it, the iSeries is an extreme example of integration, openness, collaborative community, and support of it, and it really is a metaphor for the vision we have for our systems. I think those concepts will be applied to different products in different markets, and they really will each have their own personality. During the pass decade as the industry has been focused a lot on Unix and Intel systems, I think the understanding of the iSeries was diminished in the marketplace. We really see the industry moving in the direction where the kinds of things that are done in an extremely integrated way on i, are more prominent, and some of those qualities mimicked on other types of products.

Jim Oberholtzer: Two comments. Somewhere along the line, you guys decided to give us the ability to download software keys over the Internet and have it go straight onto the box. That is really quite cool. It saves me lots of time typing. The customers look at that and go, Cool. They love that thing.

Second thing. I install i5s with HMCs multiple times per month and the only comments I'm getting from the customers is the same thing I just said: This is really cool. They just love it. I'm not getting any trouble with the software anymore. I'm not getting any trouble with the hardware anymore. In the opposite of the earlier comment [from Al Barsa], the HMC does very well. Keep it up. Keep going. We love it.

(Larry from ??? Solutions): For Don, I believe there's a no charge obsolete removal technology offering to help clean up your house.

Al Barsa: OS/400 is extremely heavily tested. I know because I'm part of the group that tests it. I'm currently running 6.5.4 of Lotus Notes, and it is completely broken. Does anybody test Lotus Notes? Have you tested Lotus 7 on an iSeries?

Mike Lawrie: Yes.

Amy Hurley (an IBMer from the audience affiliated with Notes/Domino): I would like to sit down and find out what your problem is. Because I think it's great. I think Notes/Domino 7 is great.

(Another user asking a question): We are a dedicated iSeries shop. We are your typical small to medium sized business. And we have avoided the bitter pill of WebSphere, but we need to get to the Web. Is that the only path?

Jim Herring: WebSphere is not the only path to the Web. WebSphere's got some fantastic functionality in it around Java and around J2EE, as a platform neutral function that we think is very important for a lot of our ISVs. But Java is not in fact the only way to the Web. In fact, we began introducing with a partnership through a company called Zend earlier this year PHP, the ability to run PHP scripts against your Apache Web server on i5/OS on your iSeries. And in fact we're going to be extending that partnership into the future with Zend, if everything works out right, that allows us to integrate that function within i5/OS to provide that sort of capability.

So that if don't want to bite into Java so to speak, you can extend your iSeries to the Web quite simply with PHP. I might also put in a plug for one more product which is just beginning to see the light of day, it's the, and I'm going to get the name wrong Kelly [Schmotzer], but it's basically the EZ Web Builder. It's available on alphaWorks, you can download it, there's already been several hundred downloads. If you have any questions, Kelly Schmotzer is here….Again, it's intended for to be able to build very simple Web sites, to get them up very quickly, without the need to deploy WebSphere.

Kareem Yusuf: Well I guess I'm sorry it's such a bitter pill. We are definitely trying to make it a little easier to swallow. I think we've done a lot particularly with version 6 of the application server, specifically on the usability front. But as we said, there are alternatives. We are seeing the emergence of scripting language. And even we in WebSphere are addressing it and supporting it 100 percent. We are looking at customers who are looking at mixed development, because they want to do something with quick scripting, and how does that connect back to the J2EE apps they have. Can I provide a PHP interface into MQSeries, for example. So we're thinking about all those kinds of strategies, and we are evolving on multiple tracks. Yes, we have used Java a lot, it's obviously a major programming language for us. But by no means are we saying it's the only way to integrate, or do anything in the world, means you have to write Java.

Joyce Bordash: I would just like to expand upon that, as having the voice of the partners here for a little bit about the WebSphere story. We have a very robust Tools Innovation program, as part of the iSeries Innovation program. We have over 100 different tools providers. It's all based on the iSeries Developer Roadmap. We have a category on enhancing your user interface, and we have some wonderful partners that have some alternative solutions that can help take care of your solutions to the Web that's a great alternative. One that comes to mind that's out on the Expo right now is BCD with their WebSmart product. John Quarantello, who is our Tools Executive who manages the program, is here today.

Charles Guarino: Many of my colleagues are still developing green-screen applications. And still to this day, many of them in the iSeries generation are getting older and older. Many people coming out of college today still don't know what an iSeries is, they don't want to work on it. This morning Dr. Frank jokingly suggested the iSeries should come with a free game. As funny as it was, he makes a point. The point is the younger generations don't associate this box with sexy applications. Without this being an oxymoron, is there any shareware or freeware available that could give us a template to show us and give the older developers an opportunity to get involved with the latest and greatest technologies.

Jim Herring: I think one of the movements that we have begun to harness within IBM and iSeries development, is around open source, and PHP is the latest example of that, as Apache was before. And I think that that is going to be at the root of what you say…with all due respect to Frank, most people buy iSeries computers to run serious business applications. Their entire businesses--your entire businesses--run on these computers.

So these sort of capabilities your talking about including in the iSeries are indeed around making it easy, and maybe exciting--and perhaps even sexy--to develop applications on the platform using well-recognized programming environments, like Apache, like PHP, and like some of the other capabilities, so that people feel very natural about developing on the platform. Even Unix developers might feel natural developing on the platform.

Tom Davidson: Part of the Unix and Linux draw, so to speak, from an application standpoint, is they have this huge developer base. Anybody in college--or heck, even me, I've got an old PC, I downloaded Linux and I can develop for that platform. Is there any thought of having a truly affordable iSeries that a college kid that's interested, can go out and buy this sucker and be a developer on iSeries? Because when you have a million heads out there, they can come up with some good ideas.

Mark Shearer: That's a good question. I've actually been asked that question all over the world. We're going to start with Peter, then maybe Jim and Joyce.

Peter Bingaman: Several of us today mentioned the importance of our Academic Initiative next year. I'll tell you this, broadly speaking, we've made very good strides where we are. We can do a lot better job of guiding those efforts.

We, for instance, have really been focused on measuring the number of universities that educate on iSeries, and now we've shifted our focus to the number of students that have been educated on iSeries. It's a very different statement to make. And in doing that, making that shift, we're forcing ourselves to look at who those students are, and the best way to get them educated.

We're taking a much more radical approach to the way that we're going to do education next year. We're targeting specific universities that want to do new work with us on iSeries. We're targeting a set of current universities to help build their skills, and we're looking at building a more robust online capabilities. Within those three, Linda and I are trying to think of all sorts of ways to make it easier for students to build application on the iSeries.

I love your thoughts. Throw them at us. As a matter of fact, it might even become part of our open source marketing that we're doing. Send us your ideas, because I'll tell you something, if you think about it, over the past year, we've been taking your ideas and acting on them.

Jim Herring: I would add that under our iSeries Initiative program, that our business partners and developers can get a hold of an iSeries through our Virtual Loaner program. And this has been a big boon to many o f our developers, no matter what their age or university affiliation, to be able to use an iSeries with a current operating system, current functionality, and deploy really cool new technologies along the Developer's Roadmap.

Mike Lawrie: Clearly 2005 is a big year for us in the Lotus business with iSeries, not only with Notes/Domino 7 coming out, but also with Workplace Collaborative Services, and Workplace Services Express. Also coming out is Workplace Designer. I've had the pleasure of working with our business partners building thousands of applications using Domino Designer, which is the exact same development team that's had to build an equivalent product in the Workplace space also. It's a very rich GUI based environment for building applications that people know and love and have a lot of skills in Domino, they now can bring over to Workplace also, on the iSeries. So we really hope to stoke all the creativity in application development on top of the iSeries platform.

Bill Donahue: The Academic Initiative is very important obviously. It's important to have a program that we can drive locally in each region or each country. Each of our 16 sales areas will be responsible for driving this program locally, so I think that will put a little more traction into this.

Mark Shearer: The question about the entry-level system. I think tomorrow would be good.

Randall Munson: Again, like last conference, I'm encouraged about what I hear. The fact that we've got our own advertising agency is a good [improvement, things] will be remarkably different, I hope. Having 20 percent growth in awareness is wonderful. Having twice as many white papers or articles written as before is great. And having a TV commercial that you actually put on TV--I don't know where you come up with that one. As opposed to the great ones that showed at the last time, that you didn't put on your TV or your Web site because the attorneys wouldn't let you.

Mark Shearer: I'm told these were almost attorney approved.

Randall Munson: But I would caution you before you get too giddy that most of the numbers you've been showing to us have been in contrast to the past. And if you only compare yourself by looking back, and saying we're twice as good as we used to be, when we were really bad, doesn't mean that you're necessarily terrific. So if you have 500 articles now which is twice as many as you had before, how many were written on Windows, or AIX. That would be the measurement. And when you're measuring yourself, take a look at when is it that the world's going to say What's the hot new system? And it's iSeries. Or what is it your working on in the university that is really the going stuff, and it's iSeries. When you look at it globally, that's when you know that you've really made the change in direction. Right now you've kind of gone from a drop to a little bit upwards. You've got a lot of momentum to keep that up.

Mark Shearer: First of all, do I look giddy?

Randall Munson: A little bit, yeah.

Mark Shearer: I couldn't agree with you more. Something that I've always done, is I've always measured my business results--I don't always tell my boss this--I always measured my business against the marketplace. And I think that is the appropriate metric. What kind of mindshare in the marketplace versus Microsoft and Intel. I completely get what you're saying. I really believe in my heart, which is why I signed up for this job for several years, that there is a latent market for integrated business systems. And I assure you that, while I may be upbeat, I am certainly not giddy about a month or two or six or twelve. Two and a half years from now, I'll sort of give a check point with you, and we'll determine whether my optimism is justified. I completely agree with you. I won't be satisfied until the iSeries plays the roll in the industry that it should. So I completely accept your comments.

Peter Bingaman: I think it's OK to celebrate success. We've made strong progress. And I think you also heard us up here say we're not done. We have a long way to go. We have a lot to build on. We've built it, and we're moving forward. So hopefully next time we're hear in the spring, it'll be even better. But all of us are very clear that we need to continue working and not get to comfortable. But it's OK to celebrate success, right?

(Yet another user we did not catch the name of): Basically I was wondering if there was ever going to be any type of advanced support line. . . One of the frustrations I've had as an admin over the years, is that typically when I call in, I know more than the person on the phone I'm talking to, and I'm talking to them for help. Sometimes it's like pulling teeth to get somebody who actually knows what I'm talking about. Is there any thought given to that?

Walt Ling: Actually I haven't heard a comment like that in some time, so it's taken me a little bit by surprise. But I understand, wouldn't doubt you at all. There is an advanced support option for some additional dollars that you can get into and have that kind of support. But I'd be interested in talking a little bit more with you about some of your personal experience because that's something in general that we like to handle for everybody. We do train all of our folks to the highest level for support. We don't have any level one, level two, or any of that kind of stuff.

Peter Bingaman: Education is something that we haven't had quite honestly on our top priority list for a while for iSeries. . . it's front and center about what we have to do. We're been traveling around the world, and its like Czechoslovakia is talking to us about the importance of education. Hungary. Every country, every state we go into, it's the importance of education. So it's on our radar. I would love to be able to tell you it's something we can turn the switch on, and make it work for us. I think the magic of our efforts will only come along when we have the complete business humming along the way it needs to. The visibility of the iSeries needs to be extremely tangible in the market so there is a desire to want to learn. When there's a desire to want to learn, there's a desire to educate. So a lot of pieces need to be coming together. We've got the pieces, we just need to keep executing.

Linda Grigoleit (an IBMer in the audience responsible for iSeries educational initiatives): We have, for about eight years, had a summer school annually. We do get a pretty good number every year for the summer. But we realize there's other things we need to be doing. So we are going to be as, Mark mentioned, really beefing up the whole academic initiative, and you will see a lot of things happening. We're going to be doing things such as, a lot of the Internet-based education, briefings, e kinds briefing so that professors can come into our regularly scheduled e-briefings with our customer briefing personnel, and learn about the iSeries, and figure out what their pitch is and what their niche is, and what they're going to teach . . . but we have a lot of plans…we know we have to do more, we have made progress, and we know we have to do more.

David Gillespie, Diamond Corp: Whenever I call the help desk and tech support, is there any reason I cannot get help for my iSeries or my i5/OS. I'm only able to get tech support for my AS/400 and V5R3 . . . We don't have iSeries on the selection of things we can pick, we only have AS/400, and we don't have i5/OS, we only have V5R3.

Walt Ling: You know how some of you guys will skip a release? We're just skipping a name. "I feel giddy, oh so giddy. What a pity, how giddy, I feel."