Oracle, iPhone, IBM i
Tight Hardware And Software Integration Work Best
I recently read where Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison touts those customers who bought a suite of hardware, software, and services were significantly more satisfied with their purchase than customers who had purchased a single piece of that technology bundle.
Ellison credited Apple’s Steve Jobs with being out in front on this design philosophy: “He believed that if you engineer the hardware and software to work together, the overall user experience of the product is better than if you just do a part of the solution.”
Ground-breaking analysis from four university researchers validate that technology professionals prefer integrated computer systems to buying and assembling piece parts.
The findings, based on a scientific assessment of 36,000 customer ratings of tech vendors over four years, provide hard proof of the benefits of this computer design philosophy.
“We show that buyers obtaining a solution of hardware, software, and services report higher levels of satisfaction and loyalty than buyers obtaining any single layer of the stack,” write the authors in an article titled “Testing the Steve Jobs Hypothesis in a B2B Context,” published in the August 2013 issue of the Journal of Service Research.
The article was written by Jason Kuruzovich, an assistant professor of Management Information Systems at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lally School of Management and Technology, and three colleagues. “If you have a software product directly engineered to fit with the hardware product, you just have this better match.”
Wow. That reminded me.
I recall attending a presentation in 2012 by Dr. Frank Soltis, IBM’s architect for S/38, AS400 and IBM i. At that conference , Dr. Soltis spoke how Apple had designed the iPhone with specialized chips and integrated software to handle the routines no longer in the central processor to improve performance.
Dr. Soltis pointed out that IBM had used this approach since 1979 with the introduction of the System/38 and the hierarchical use of microprocessors and firmware integrated with the operating system.
Dr. Soltis highlighted the evolution of the IBM AS400, iSeries and IBM i on POWER with tight hardware and software integration for improved performance, ease of use and increased programming productivity.
Which makes me think … IBM i users have known about this for 37 years! The others are just catching on.
The next time you hear someone tell you IBM i is old technology, point out that Oracle and Apple are doing now what IBM started back in 1979.
IBM i – Way Ahead Of Its Time.
