Where's EDS? And What Happened to Hitachi?
Our readers comment on the September 2001 issue.
What About EDS?
I quickly scanned through your article "The Enterprise Systems Power 100" when I received the July issue. I wanted to see what you had to say about our EDS (Electronic Data Systems) CEO, Dick Brown. To my amazement, he wasn't listed. I'm curious. Did you miss him, or did you think he ranked behind the others you chose? I feel that he has done an excellent job in turning around EDS and also has become a very influential figure in the industry, but maybe I'm too biased. I feel this was a big miss. What do you think?
Lisa Troutner
Information Analyst
Fort Wayne Truck Assembly
lisa.troutner@eds.com
Dick Brown has indeed been instrumental in EDS' impressive growth as a pure-play global services powerhouse. Recent savvy deals include EDS' giant outsourcing pact with Sabre (a $2.2 billion contract over 10 years in which EDS will manage Sabre's IT business) and a hardware services pact with Dell that gives EDS inroads into the midmarket arena. Stay tuned—we'll be repeating the list next year, and there are bound to be additions and changes.
Hitachi and the S/390
I recently installed Visio 2000 and then called various vendors to ask if they had any Visio templates for their products. When I called Hitachi, I was told they no longer were marketing their S/390 CPUs. When did this happen?
Granted, Hitachi's prices vis-a-vis IBM or Amdahl were sky-high—as I understand it, Delta Airlines and parts of the government were some of their biggest customers. Still, any light you can shed on Hitachi's decision to drop out of the S/390 market would be appreciated.
John F. Regus
jfregus@ix.netcom.com
In early March, Hitachi Data Systems announced the it would place its two S/390 mainframe product lines (CMOS and ACE-II) into "limited new production." According to Gartner Inc. analysts, "Hitachi claimed that it cannot operate its current S/390 processor business at acceptable profitable levels."
Gartner criticized the change as "an extreme move that was poorly conceived." Gartner analysts Mike Chuba, Josh Krischer and John Phelps concluded, however, that HDS mainframe customers shouldn't necessarily be swayed from considering Hitachi upgrades, concluding that "unless service pricing, support, or both become an issue, we do not advocate precipitous migration off installed systems."
Magazine Mining
How do I get copies of previously published articles from your magazine? I'd prefer to access them online, but I only see access to the current magazine articles on your Web site. I'm interested in the June article, "Taming the Paper Tiger."
Thanks for your help.
Dennis Bliss
Technical Services Manager
SC_DataCenter
bliss@scdatacenter.com
We post the current issue of the magazine at www.esj.com on the first day of the cover date (this issue will be available on the site on Sept. 1). The content of all past issues is available there as well. You can use the search engine to find specific articles.
Disk Density Futures
As the storage marketing manager for ClearPath systems at Unisys Corporation, I found [Jon Toigo's] article on disk densities very interesting. He's absolutely right that every time a vendor says "we've reached our limit," another finds a way to exceed it. But what I found more interesting was Jon's comments and quotes on disk virtualization. We see storage virtualization as an up-and-coming technology, but we have a slightly different image of how it will shape the storage industry. I'd be very interested in discussing this topic further with Jon.
Steven M. O'Brien
Unisys Systems and Technology
ClearPath Storage Marketing
steven.obrien@unisys.com
If you would like to reach Jon Toigo, you can e-mail him at jtoigo@intnet.net.
Humorless?
What happened to the jokes in Enterprise Systems? It was always the first page I read. I looked forward to the laughs each month. Please bring [it] back.
Helen Doman
HELEN.DOMAN@customs.treas.gov
Sorry, but we'd reached the point where the jokes on that page had already appeared via e-mail and the Internet months earlier. We've decided to use it for something different for now—Laura Wonnacott's new column on business integration issues. Hope you stick around and continue reading the new Enterprise Systems for other reasons as well.