This paper is obviously a call for action by IBM and its customers, and requires joint effort from them. VM needs continued enhancement and exploitation of new technology. IBM is investing resources in VM, and we customers should shape their development to make them produce the products we need. IBM needs to be open to outside thoughts and code to encourage the creation of new facilities to keep VM competitive. The facilities introduced in VM/ESA Release 2 are a wonderful example of how well this can work. This is no time for Not Invented Here thinking. The implication for source code availability is obvious - source code helps make IBM systems better and more competitive.
Additionally, we all should promote and market our systems' capabilities. We should do this anyway: it's our responsibility to provide the best technology for our users' problems. In many cases the right answer is VM, and we should be demonstrating that for our users, even if that means helping our users create the applications.
At the same time, it's essential that IBM state publicly - where senior MIS managers can see it - that VM has an important future, and provide a marketing campaign to make the computing public aware of VM's strengths, as they do for OS/2, AIX, and MVS. How refreshing it would be to see an IBM advertisement promoting VM's unique abilities: the only user-friendly, powerful, scalable, client-server capable, robust operating environment.
We'll never recapture the period in the 1980s when VM had the chance to become a world-beating, globally accepted operating system. The chance was there, because VM was so clearly superior to competing systems, and VM could have become the dominant computing desktop system and style of computing.
Sadly, the opportunity was thrown away through mistakes like OCO, the 8-year delay in producing a real VM/XA, excessively prolonged adherence to the 3270 interface, and delays producing a credible VM-on-a-workstation and GUI. The opportunity was missed because IBM didn't know it had one, and kept travelling the worn path of being paternalistic with its customers. IBM refused to market its most competitive system, and has paid the price.
There's no use crying over spilled milk, and we have to go forward with what is achievable. What we do have, despite all these travails, is a robust, vital, and cost-effective computing platform. VM is still one of the most productive ways of doing computing available anywhere, even when compared to trendier environments. The chance to take over the world has been lost, but VM is still the best tool by far for many applications, and provides highly efficient and cost-effective computing. It is a product that IBM can be proud of, and produces customer loyalty and profits for IBM.
Some people claim that mainframes and mainframe operating systems like VM (though, as we've seen, VM runs very nicely on a server or desktop) are dinosaurs. We should remember two things: first, dinosaurs were highly successful and lasted a very long time. More relevant to our discussion, dinosaurs never really went away. Instead, they became smarter, smaller, faster, and more agile - we call them birds, and they are still among us. Like these dinosaurs, our systems - regards of variety - must all become smarter, faster, and more agile to survive. VM, with its tradition of speed, low cost, and flexibility, is ideally suited to succeed. To the extent that VM is less well-known than other computer systems, it constitutes a secret weapon for those smart enough to employ it.
VM offers unique and valuable facilities to its users, and a unique product - unmatched by anyone else - for IBM to market. I hope I've reminded you about some of VM's strengths and the importance it continues to have for both IBM and its customers.
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