Is powerhouse dead?

[Murray Scholz]

Hi Steve,

Not dead up here either.  We're developing and supporting various
Powerhouse Applications for Livestock Improvement Organisations (beef
cattle, dairy cattle, goats, elk, alpacas, horses etc. etc.). All
running on VMS Alphas in various parts of Australia , New Zealand , USA
, Canada , SE Asia, South Africa. We have 10 very experienced Powerhouse
people here... ??? possibly making us one of the larger Powerhouse shops
in the country ???

We too have been going through the heartache of moving platforms, but
over the last couple of years (lots of eveluations , meetings,
discussions, pilot projects etc.) but have extended the life of our
Powerhouse investment many years by providing various web front-ends to
parts of the application.  The back-end remains rock-solid (Alpha  + VMS
+ Powerhouse), and is quick and relatively easy to maintain and enhance.
At the time (this is 4 or 5 years ago) we looked at Powerhouse Web and
Axiant for this development, but they were not sufficiently robust for
what we were trying to do, so we went with custom-written Delphi Apps
using a Sybase database (we had some in-house experience with these two
from other projects).

I agree with Steve's description of the large companies, previously
Powerhouse shops, now being so heavily brain-washed by the 'consulting'
community, to not see the real advantages of what they might have
already in place, and they end up (after many millions of $'s) with
something that , if they're luck, only JUST does what their old
application used to do.

Powerhouse has been a great product for us, over many years.  We have
successfully been using it since 1987 !! , but it is becoming
inceasingly difficult to attract new employees who see the product as
'out of the ark'. (Perhaps that's why the Sydney Cognos office is not
getting ADT support calls.... we've all got 15+ years experience with
the product).
If Cognos are not going to promote and market their ADT tools, why not
sell off the ADT portion to someone who will , leaving them to
concentrate on their BI tools.  The new 'owner' might then be able to
breathe some new life into the old dog.

Regards
-- 
Murray Scholz
Associate Director
Agricultural Business Research Institute
University of New England
Armidale NSW 2351 Australia