Rather than bite the bullet and offer a dramatic improvement in price-performance – particularly by slashing software charges IBM Corp has begun an unprecedented national US print advertising campaign to tout its mainframes and try to counter the impression that mainframes are dinosaurs: IBM executives also are sponsoring conferences with their worldwide customers, to assure […]
Rather than bite the bullet and offer a dramatic improvement in price-performance – particularly by slashing software charges IBM Corp has begun an unprecedented national US print advertising campaign to tout its mainframes and try to counter the impression that mainframes are dinosaurs: IBM executives also are sponsoring conferences with their worldwide customers, to assure them of the direction of their technology and to change the growing view among some computer users that workstations are replacing the mainframe – Our research says that the information systems department still believes in us, William Wilson, assistant general manager of the Enterprise Systems line told Reuter, but when they go and talk to their users and executives, because of this perception that mainframes are no longer relevant, they have a lot more selling to do, he said, referring to the sales pitch a chief information officer must make to executives to justify a decision to buy a mainframe; IBM will spend $750,000 this year on print advertising in trade and mainstream publications on pushing mainframes; the executives also admitted that they considered changing the name of the mainframe, as they plan to emphasise its host server capabilities that the workstation is also known for, but Our market research tells us mainframe is not a bad word.
