Know-How Exchange : Career/Training

Sunil,

Is it worth it? I assume you are asking if there is payback for your investment in time and money to take training on the AS/400. The answer to this is figured out by understanding the marketing. First, are there customers who have need for AS/400 programs and maintenance programs? If so, what are their needs? Then you have to look at the competition. What are their strengths and weaknesses? How well do competitors satisfy the customers' needs and where do they NOT satisfy their needs. Then you look at your own skills. What are your core competencies? How can you leverage them into unique selling points to satisfy customers' needs better than your competitors?

Another important point: You were unsuccessful in CAD/CAM products training. Why? What did you learn about that? How can you apply the lessons to your new venture?

The IT field is pretty full with shops as prevalent as insurance salesmen and convenience stores. There are big companies that are global and single person shops locally. Every time there's a company downsize, another group of IT entrepreneurs spring up (and marketing consultants, but we won't go there). What do you bring to the party? In a mature market with a mature platform, where are you going to add value to potential customer to wrestle them away from their present providers? You won't be successful offering exactly what everyone else offers already. Price is a factor, perhaps, but with IT, loyalty to present support and fear/risk of what happens you make the wrong decision mean you have to be very significantly cheaper to pluck them away - like 50% cheaper, in some cases.

Sunil, you will have to create a very large value proposition to before you can count on a payback in this venture (or any venture). You do that by understanding the needs, your competitors, and your own capabilities.

Good luck to you and I hope this helps!

Wayde

Dear Sunil

I too am left wondering “Why choose the AS/400 format?” If you are contemplating new work on the AS 400 platform, you will most certainly be using the iSeries which replaced the AS/400 name when IBM consolidated their servers into the eServer Umbrella. The processors and processes are radically different, though both run the majority of commercial programming languages. If you are going to invest in a 200 hour course, make sure that you are trained in the appropriate hardware!

Next, you need to answer my original question “Why AS/400?” Apart from the fact that accountants use them. They were applied to about 95% of fortune 500 companies and their equivalent in most countries. They have a formidable reputation for reliability. They run programmes the GUI of which make MS DOS look modern. They also run the most up-to-date C++ and Java applications.

The future of working with the AS/400 was being debated in Jan 2000 on Expert Insights (https://www.ecs-group.com/pdf/regard_dexpert/expert_insight_ecs1.pdf) and the consensus of the view then appeared to be “OK if you want to service a declining breed”

More recently the trade website Experts Exchange has given a pretty decent review of the AS/400 iSeries prospects which you can find on: https://www.experts-exchange.com/Programming/Programming_Platforms/AS400/Q_...

The thing about this is that depending on the size of the current user community (Which was large but under exploited in 2000) and the size of the pool of people who can service that market, you could become either a prized specialist or one of a redundant herd of dinosaurs! I can’t tell you which, as I’ve not set out to look at AS/400 or iSeries applications for several months and the market will have changed since then.

From a CRM point of view, I love them. As it seems to cost about £2Million just to get a contact management / service desk function working for 20 people, we look awfully, awfully competitive when we do the same thing for £20,000! Front-ending AS/400 mainframes are a doddle!

From your perspective, this is an example of looking at the market rather than looking at the marketing. It doesn’t matter how clued up you become and how well you then sell yourself, if the market dictates that there is no demand on the day that your CV hits the prospective employers, you will lose out.

Please allow me to make an analogy which involves dinosaurs. I am an aficionado of electronic music and a few years ago, I tracked down an EMS Synthi 100 from 1975 which has seen service in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (Or so the seller said!) This beast needs a studio the size of a barn to house it, but it is a wonderful monster. That you can replicate it on a modern PC is irrelevant – it doesn’t sound or feel the same. The downside is that this analogue monster, apart from costing £xx,000 second hand, needs maintaining and the number of engineers who could do this in 2001 were few. As a consequence, it cost me a small fortune to get it working properly. As word spread that I had the thing, more guy’s with beards came out of the woodwork until I was left with a waiting list of analogue synthesiser experts who would look after the monster for free as long as I let them produce their belated loopy-1970’s psychedelic stuff in the wee-small hours (And I guess, turn a blind eye to the odd smelling incense coming from the barn!)

Thankfully, the guy who got it working became a friend and he has enough projects on to keep him busy for the next 5 years, but had this been his main business, as you seem to want to make the AS/400, he would be out of a job by now.


A strange tale from another star? Perhaps it’s relevant for you.

Regards


Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions

Sunil,

While the information is helpful to understand your rationale, I still stand behind the advice I gave initially and also the questions and comments of the other experts who answered. AS400 is an very mature platfor with a well established service supplier base. Virtually all of your competition can say they have lots of years experience. "We all know how difficult to get good AS/400 professionals." I, and the other contributing experts are not agreeing with this statement. We believe it is easy to get good professionals from any number of well entrenched competitors.

You seem to be basing your business on your partner's experience. I believe the other experts here are saying that this may not be a common experience in the market place you are entering. My suggestion still is to go do your marketing homework to figure out what customers need, how you can serve their needs better than the already tough competition.

With respect to your experience with the training company - I believe a lot of the issue here was in understanding the customers' needs and who would have been the best customers to market to. For instance, you might have looked to the companies as the customer. They get the benefit in most cases and have the money. They can also make sure the employees are given time to attend. You have payment UP FRONT and a four week class. If the employees don't attend, well, they don't learn - their loss! This is pretty common for training companies. Just as an example....

So if you are looking for an endorsement for your ideas or a magic pill that's going to ensure your success, then I cannot give that endorsement without more information about your market and what you intend to offer that has a value proposition to you customers, and there is no magic pill.

Wayde