Re: [nv-l] MLM and other new features on Linux

[James Shanks <jshanks@us.ibm.com>]

Jane and others,

All IBM Marketing reps, and all Level 2 folks worldwide are supposed to know how to open an enhancement request or have someone within their local organization who can.   That much I can say for certain.
Business Partner?  Partnerworld?  User Group?  I cannot tell you.  The nature of those relationships are not known to me.  I would talk to whatever contacts you have in those situations and ask them.   I believe that those relationships are set up by the marketing organization.  But that's all I can tell you.   I'm just a bug fixer here.  As my old mentor in IBM used to say, "Of the over 300,000 people who work for IBM in US, none of them work for me."  Which means that I am not a manager, I make no decisions on product direction, and I have almost no contacts outside my own little sphere.

Hope this helps

James Shanks
Level 3 Support  for Tivoli NetView for UNIX and Windows
Tivoli Software / IBM Software Group

Jane Curry <jane.curry@skills-1st.co.uk> 09/08/2003 03:51 PM

To:        James Shanks/Raleigh/IBM@IBMUS, NetView mailing list <nv-l@lists.tivoli.com>, tme10 <tme10@lists.tivoli.com>         cc:                 Subject:        Re: [nv-l] MLM and other new features on Linux

Thanks for this, James.  I guess you are not the right person to answer 
my next question but perhaps others on the list know...

As a small Business Partner, I don't have a "marketing rep" and I opened 
a number of PMRs to do with NetView MLM at the end of last year all of 
which finally came back as "design limitations".  What is the correct 
route for me to open enhancement requests?  Do Tivoli User Groups have a 
route in to this process?  Is there anything in the Partnerworld 
programme that I have missed that would help?

All input gratefully received!
Cheers,
Jane
(I do appreciate that "beating up James" is NOT the right answer!)

James Shanks wrote:

>
> Folks,
>
> With all the recent talk about MLM and Linux, I feel compelled to say 
> that there has been no announcement of  new features ported to Linux 
> fro 7.1.4.  I expect  the features for NetView for Linux 7.1.4 to be 
> exactly the same as in 7.1.3.  
>
> With regard to RDBMS, that issue has hinged for some time on the 
> Framework and RIM.  Without Framework support of Linux, there was no 
> RIM, and without RIM, no NetView.  I think Framework has recently 
> announced Linux support but I am in the dark about RIM.  Not my area 
> of the product.  But I do know this.  If you think that expanding 
> NetView for Linux to include RIM,  APM, MLM, and so on, then you 
> should be calling your marketing rep or Support and opening an 
> enhancement request.      
>
> I cannot say how many users of  MLM there are, but marketing thinks it 
> is not a large percentage of the NetView population, and so the entire 
> issue of going forward with MLM is under review every release.  I'm 
> afraid that if you don't raise your voices and make them aware of what 
> you want, that it may not happen for a long, long time, if at all.
>
> I think that the real issue is that  while the marketers understand 
> NetView, they don't understand how you are really using MLM. 
>  Unfortunately, you will have to tell them.
>
> Just so you know, MLM on NT is only exists now as a result of earlier 
> user requests, and look what they did with it.  The assumption that 
> was made when MLM for NT was developed was that the major function of 
> MLM was to off-load polling from netmon,  and thus that only someone 
> with a hierarchy of  interconnected network management platforms would 
> want or need MLM, so they developed that "attended MLM" concept you 
> all disparage so much and they missed what you really wanted, smconfig 
> on Windows.  This is the kind of thing that happens when the user 
> community is largely silent about what they really want.  They get 
> what some marketing type or development manager thinks they need 
> rather than what they actually need.
>
> So please open those enhancement requests.  You have nothing to lose 
> and everything to gain.
>
> James Shanks
> Level 3 Support  for Tivoli NetView for UNIX and Windows
> Tivoli Software / IBM Software Group 


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Copyright (c) 2003 Jane Curry <jane.curry@skills-1st.co.uk>.  All rights reserved.