PowerHouse in the next 3 years?

[Bill D Michael]

>Free PowerHouse Web....
>If PHWeb were included with the next release (8.4) along with
>AXiant do you believe that your applications would be better served????

PHWeb, absolutely - that's the only way we'll even look at migrating up the
Cognos path, otherwise it's off to other vendors. Axiant is a "who cares"
until it works without losing all your source code at random, and has real
manuals; right now it's still a joke, and it's probably too late to try to
fix it. All I ever _really_ wanted was a "gui" front end for Quick, not a
VB lookalike that just happens to use an almost-Quick back end...

>Do you see the potential for migrating existing applications to the
web????
>to Unix????

We _will_ migrate from VMS to Unix, unfortunately. We _may_ put front ends
on the web in the meantime, since there is no other viable "gui" path, and
short-term that could be partly with PHWeb. Long-term, PH is "outta here",
unless Cognos gets their act together and reverses direction on ADT. Short
of putting some serious development and marketing effort into PH, cutting
prices by half or more might help - but I don't see them doing either.

Regardless, out of the box today, PHWeb is not much better than Axiant; the
hand-editing after every compile has _got_ to be fixed, as well as the
transaction model in general. And to ask us to pay for it as well is
ludicrous. WRQ's Reflection web-based product would probably be a better
bet at present, and just stick with standard Quick for the back end.

>Would IT directors embrace this technology???

Not in general, Cognos ADT has burned too many people to be trusted. Those
who haven't been so burned will never hear about PHWeb or Axiant anyway,
and will just use Java or whatever else is the buzzword of the week.

>Do you think that there is a need for PH Linux???

It might save the language, but only if the cost was inline with the
competition, and if anybody was told it existed. At $5K per copy or more,
forget it, don't waste the effort. Even $2K would be a no-sale.

>Do you need Itanium support???

No. PH will be dead before Itanium becomes a major issue.

>Are you prepared to show cost savings, manhour reductions, increased
>productivity etc etc ??

Where I am now, we know PH and what we can do with it, and this is a given.
Most PH shops are probably in the same situation. Nobody not already using
PH has ever heard of it, or is ever likely to, so they don't care.

Bill
(Flames off-list, please...)

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