System iNetwork

I'm no adverstising guru, but I'm not sure that what works, or not, in a beer commercial is necessarily what works, or not, in a commercial for a business computing platform, i or otherwise. What the public needs to understand about System i is what makes it different from, and better than, its competitors. Stability and reliability, measured by up time, comes to mind as one easy-to-understand variable. Server consolidation capability is another, and there are more. IBM wastes money on generic "IBM" commercials. What is needed are spots that powerfully tell the i Story. (Even a good telling of the p Story would be better than this generic I-Man stuff.)

Don't knock it. I've read that some of the most effective commercials are rather subtle, and maybe even not so memorable. But having a guy with a big "i" on his shirt is a *REALLY BIG* plug for the System i! Believe it!

Do pretty girls hanging around make macho cars go faster, better, quicker, or louder? No! But they're in all the pix, because of the subtle "association" factor. Those are "remember-me" images for guys, and even gals like to associate themselves with being attractive.

I haven't seen it yet, but based on the description, this is an "ecumenical" IBM commercial (what else can they make?), but it gives subtle associative prominence to the "i".

This is a big concession, from their perspective, in my opinion, for those reasons.

Unless vendors market their ERP solutions with a System i server/s, its install base will continue to shrink.

If you go to a vendor with business requirements today they are pitching SAP, .NET or Java solutions running on Wintel or UNIX servers. They don’t even pitch the System i platform in that mix. If the vendors won't market their applications on the System i, guess what, it's dead.

Less then a handful of vendors have bought up all the older ERP applications for the platform and choose to milk their existing install base for support fees.

IBM pushed the roadmap to Java. Vendors got the message and created new apps. The Java apps run on any platform and since there is no money to be made in a System i server solution compared to other servers they don’t pitch the System i solutions.

IBM's advertising for the System i is pointless. Perhaps they should sit down with the software vendors.

OK. Keep in mind that nearly 100% of Anheuser Busch revenue goes into advertising while the expenses of day to day operations are covered by the spent grains of the brewing process getting sold of for cattle feed! This leaves the folks at Bud an ample budget for advertising both good and bad.

The revenue from System i goes to support not only the stockholders, but the many families in Rochester, Toronto, and elsewhere there are IBM folks supporting the System i. At least that is where I hope it is going since they don't seem to spend much on advertising.

I agree, the System i folks should not be celebrating the ubiquity of the i but rather the differences. Ubiquity is for System x. I really wish Rochester would take their fair share of the advertising budget from New York and do something different, provocative, exciting, dangerous! But lose the homogeneous black and white campaign. Nobody knows what is being sold except Gil!

Maybe a Penn and Teller campaign where Teller tries to destroy a System i and the machine just keeps on running while Penn mugs for the camera and blathers about the reliability of the greatest platform in the world.

Come on folks -- If IBM can't think of a good advertising campaign, let's give them some suggestions....

I want to hear yours!

i-commercials about i are much better than no commercials at all. But what's wrong with i 'cause i haven't seen the i-commercials in any other place than IBM workshops i have been. i am an i expert in Scandinavia and i am really bugged because i don't see i-commercials! That's why i see this article as i-ronic ;)

I think the best selling point IBM can do to keep the iSeries alive is make it run windows, vmware, and Xen.

If the box does not run this stuff, AIX, UNIX, Linux, Power6, i, I, e, eye, z, x, and whatever names they come up with for all this junk will just be masking the fact that IBM, from inaction, is pushing the best box ever out of the data centers around the world.

I know IBM must be thinking about this....

Have you seen a picture of the BladeCenter S . . . a blade chasis for under or beside a desk, which looks a lot like an old 400, but it runs windows, linux, AIX, and as we have heard for years . . . maybe os400 (I mean i5/OS) one day.

Virtual systems and windows is the key.

Until i (must mean IBM) can integrate windows into the iSeries (in a virtual machine under i5/OS or in an LPAR) then IBM does not an integrated solution (iSeries box) and no amount of marketing will change that.

MF

One of the biggest gaffs in i marketing is that they don't truly paint the cost savings picture. Are they reliable? Bet on it. Can they scale? Like a train. Can they run lots of things at once? Better than any other platform. But the real cost savings are in personnel!

I'd love a picture of a huge white room with a single system i along one wall. Most of the room is empty and one guy is saying to another: "We built this room to house all our Wintel stuff but it's all been replaced by this one System i"

This may be politically dangerous but instead of such pictures, how about a room with 50 desks, each with its technician pounding away. This is the 'before'. 'After' there are a few desks at one end and a basketball hoop/air hockey or fooseball or pool table in the major space after.

Sure System i appears more expensive in the up front OTC cost but it's the people stupid, they are the expensive recurring charges! WHY ELSE WOULD OFF-SHORING BE SO TEMPTING!?

Selling a single letter ("i") is idiotic. Now wonder revenues are down 21% for the "i". That is not selling. It is brand obfuscation.