Conference 44.370::system_management

Well, Annette, although you know where I stand on this, I will repeat myself 
and say I vote for Corporate V2.1 (the latest release). This is because this is 
the version which actually *works* according to the documentation, (unlike 
Corporate V2.0, and to a lesser extent BEV V2.0 (which has a few bugs fixed, 
and a lot of documentation changes))!! And you know how unreasonable we 
developers are in asking the product to match the documentation!

Why has IS decided to go with the BEV V2.0? This company is supposed to work in 
English internally. This relieves us of the need to have lots of different
versions of software for different countries. Although there *is* only one
version of ALL-IN-1 when BEV is installed, there is no advantage in using this 
particular version. All the screens and help in our applications are still all
going to be in English whatever language has been chosen at installation time,
and the same is true for local applications in local languages. So the only
argument for using BEV I can see is that it works better than Corporate V2.0!! 

Tarik.

PS  Whatever happens, the ADG cluster is currently out of synch with the rest
of Europe! 

    Firstly, let me set the scene as I understand it:
    
    1) There is a 'corporate' version of A1. We are using V2.0 of it
    although V2.1 is now available.
    
    2) Europe developed a BEV (basic Euro. version) of V2.0 which
    restructured the modules of the corporate V2.0 to make country
    tailoring feasible. Basically, they put all the messages etc into
    separate modules so that they could easily be translated into other
    natural languages. While they were at it, the put a few go-faster
    stripes in it which cancelled out the go-slower effects of the
    re-structuring and fixed a few bugs.
    
    3) There are several country kits which layer on top of BEV to provide
    natural language versions of A1. The English country kit doesn't
    do very much I'm told!
    
    I am reliably informed that BEV is functionally no different to
    corporate V2.0 (apart from the few fixed bugs) so there should(!)
    be no problem running an application on corporate V2.0 or BEV V2.0
    as long as it was developed on corporate so it doesn't rely on a
    particular bug being fixed.
    
    Unfortunately, we are not in a position where we can dictate to
    our customers (Sales etc) which version they have to use. Especially
    in the Sales environment where a salesman might conceivably wish
    to use his A1 to demonstrate to some customers (be seen to use what
    we sell and all that!). In this case, demonstrating the natural
    language version would be a good selling point. To a certain extent,
    we have to 'go' with what our customers want.
    
    The main difficulty is that our customers have not yet decided what
    to do themselves! Until they do we have to be cautious. This implies
    not making a decision which could make life difficult for us if Sales
    decide to implement the other version to that which we have chosen.
    
    Right now, the safest choice is corporate V2.0, the next slightly
    more dangerous is BEV. One choice we cannot make is to use V2.1.
    There are too many opportunities to shoot ourselves in the foot
    if we go that way!
                                                                  
    I know that this is technically very frustrating, but until ADG
    get the necessary respect and bottle(!) to be able to tell our
    customers what they should be using, we have to go with the tide
    otherwise we will get left washed-up on the shore for everyone to
    complain about and throw bricks at!

>    we have to go with the tide
>    otherwise we will get left washed-up on the shore for everyone to
>    complain about and throw bricks at!


Ah yes, but we could make a packet selling bricks!

:-)

Jerry

>								Especially
>   in the Sales environment where a salesman might conceivably wish
>   to use his A1 to demonstrate to some customers (be seen to use what
>   we sell and all that!). In this case, demonstrating the natural
>   language version would be a good selling point.

Aha! But he can only do that if his/her system manager has chosen the local
language at installation time. So what I am saying is, given that we have to
use English throughout the company, will the language option taken at
installation be English anyway, making the local language demo irrelevant? 

Also, there seems to be two schools of thought on the 'demonstrating a real 
live application in the district sales office' pitch. It would be good if we 
could demonstrate live systems to potential accounts, but in practise we would 
never do it. The data is too sensitive and confidential. This would mean we end
up demonstrating the demo system as we do already, and that would be on any 
handy VAX which isn't a production machine... And anyway, you know how jumpy 
people get about allowing customers on to the network...!

Tarik.

    Which just goes to show that we cannot second guess what will happen
    'out in the real world' with respect to software versions and flavours.
    
    The only option we have (in the current climate) is to play safe!!
    
    (See other topic in here about Software Upgade Debate... a reply
    to that contains a possible 'out' for our technical frustrations.)

Well, due to a directive from 'above', I have upgraded ALL-IN-1 on the cluster 
to Corporate V2.1.

It seems that all European systems will be using the IS incarnation of ALL-IN-1
which will be based on the BEV2.1. As the BEV2.1 hasn't been announced yet, it
was felt that the nearest thing to it was Corporate V2.1 rather than the
BEV2.0. Hence the update. Also I believe that the UK is rebelling and has no
intention of using any BEVn, but that's another matter altogether.

Mind you, I bet nobody even noticed.

Tarik.