I'll have to speak up. We have a number of MacKinney products. We only had one problem with one of them, about 15 years ago. I worked on that with them and we fixed it together. It was a race condition in a CICS product. I won't try to say that the products are the top of the line. But they work __for us__. And we can afford them. We've had to terminate a number of products in the past 3 years due to the high, to us, cost. Of course, we are a small shop (and shrinking), and so not a prime customer of companies like IBM, CA, or LRS. We've also eliminated products on the other platforms as well.
I will say that IT management wants to eliminate z/OS entirely (along with Linux, AIX, and Oracle/Sun). They want a MS mono-culture because they are 100% convinced that is the most cost effective for our size shop. I don't have access to the budget numbers, so I can't tell. Higher level management cares only about cost (and Windows up-time is "good enough". Going for months without an IPL (reboot) means nothing to them. The occasional Windows server crash is consider "just how things are".) Actually, Windows itself rarely crashes. It's usually the main server application. On Fri, 2012-02-10 at 22:54 -0600, Ed Gould wrote: > Greg: > > I am surprised a little bit by your attitude and am disappointed in > your suggestion. > I wasn't going to mention it but since you seemed to infer I wasn't > professional I will add: > Another person in the group I was in had a similar issue with them. > The person was happy he didn't have to call as he had gotten a blank > wall from McKinney as well. > I don't recall the product and I am not about to insult you with > suggestion about being a paid lacky for Mckinney. > I have never heard anything positive about them. In the last say 20 > years I guess the negatives outweigh anything. > I never thought highly of the company as their postage card return to > order their product was a little bit less than professional in my > opinion. > Yes they are a cheap software company and I will repeat you get what > you pay for. > > Ed > > On Feb 9, 2012, at 10:27 AM, Greg Shirey wrote: > > > After a few minutes of what on the phone? Calling them morons? > > Questioning their ancestry? > > > > MacKinney support gets you speaking to a developer far faster most > > other vendors I've contacted. Those developers may come across as > > somewhat defensive of their products (most everyone tends to > > believe they have debugged their code thoroughly) but I've had many > > occasions to call for support and have never been advised to "debug > > it yourself." I think we have 5 MacKinney products in house, > > including LISTCAT PLUS - which has never abended 0C4 here... FWIW. > > > > Greg Shirey > > Ben E. Keith Company > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List On Behalf Of Ed Gould > > Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2012 8:35 AM > > > > One day I got a call from the production people about an OC4 (in > > LISTCAT) . I looked at it a little and since it was a vendor program > > I called up their "support" line. > > AFter a few minutes on the phone I got a not to nice of a response: > > "DEBUG it yourself" > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- John McKown Maranatha! <>< ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
