TUG MoM Review - The May '96 Meeting of Members

ncredible but true. As usual, time flies. It's been four months already since we've met and of course many things have happened. We had a greeeaaat golf tournament back in June; we had some sort of a summer, (Tuesday and Wednesday of last week); the Centennial Olympic Games are already history; the Blue Jays are far behind first place; the Argonauts are performing somewhat well and the Leafs just got on the ice. But we are not here to discuss what happened this summer, we're here to talk about our last MOM (Meeting of Members). The one that took place in May.

On May 22, TUG members gathered together to listen to Jeff Lem of Q.Data and Wayne Madden of Duke Communications (or News/400).

Afternoon Speaker: Jeff Lem

Data Collection

Jeff had the floor for the late afternoon session. His topic was Data Collection. Believe me, data collection has changed tremendously since I started in this business and for those not so used to these new trends, it was quite an eye-opener. Clip boards, key-punched cards and other semi-manual data collection tools have moved behind to leave the spot to these new (and not so new) gadgets which demand little or no manual entry from an operator.

To demonstrate some of the new technologies available today for data collection, Jeff brought with him a table-full of wedges, scanners and wireless terminals. They varied from a simple bar code scanner (a wand with a wire connected to a terminal of some sort) up to radio frequency (RF) terminals and to batch based equipment which are basically miniature PC's running C or BASIC programs. After his session, Jeff entertained many curious members thirsty for more information about available products and solutions on the market today.

To read more about the subject, I suggest you refer to Jeff's article in our May 1996 edition of the Newsletter. If you have access to the Internet, the same article is available from our web-site at http://www.tug.on.ca. Jeff has the honor of being the first person to have an article published on our site on the Internet. Of course, many more articles have followed since and I suggest you pay us a visit on the net to see what we have done so far.

Wayne's World

After a short break and some TUG business, our second speaker was ready to give us his view about the future of computing and the AS/400. Wayne Madden, editor of News/400 magazine, reported the amusing point of view of an individual he met recently in San Francisco. According to this individual: Evening Speaker: Wayne Madden

IBM has a PC company not to make money but to keep pressure on the Intel marketplace to keep prices down so the competition would not make too much money.
IBM could take the desktop market back anytime they want. The only reason they're not doing it is because they know the government would not let them. They (IBM) own the mainframe market and the midrange market. To own the desktop market too, would lead to anti-trust lawsuits.
They created OS/2 for larger customers who wanted to have a pure blue solution from top to bottom but they deliberately did not put a lot into it because of point two, above.

Enough about that fellow, let's get back to our speaker. For Wayne, the Internet is the door that will unlock the future of the AS/400. The AS/400 will dominate a lot of the "business" Internet market. The AS/400 will not be in the garage of the individuals that have the canned home page on the Internet. The business world will begin to use the Internet for commerce, to do business, not just to publish company information. On the business side the AS/400 will do very well.

Why the Internet?

Low cost global communication. The Internet is (or will be) to communication what the "power grid" is to electricity.
One medium for internal and external applications leading to ONE development cost, same training, same programming languages, the same methodologies, the same databases to write applications to serve your own people as well as the outside people. It does not have to be two sets of things, for instance to have this type of network inside and then this proprietary VAN to serve your EDI and other proprietary point-to-point for the customer to dial. Instead you train your employees to get on the Internet, learn how to use the system with the Internet, database and security and all that.

Internet and AS/400?

Ease of use: the AS/400 offers a lot of features, which are easy to use in terms of systems maintenance.
The database power and the integration of the database: it's going to be a wonderful database engine for the Internet.
Stability will be a key player on the Internet, as well as compatibility with business applications.

To summarize, for those who know a bit about Wayne's point of view and position on the computer world and its key players (Microsoft, Apple, IBM and others), to hear him saying these things about the future of the AS/400 leads us to believe that the world would be at its (the AS/400's) feet! T < G

Léo Lefebvre is our TUG Secretary, and can be reached at MBL3 Software Services (416) 606-5960 or via E-mail at leo@tug.on.ca