Dan said, "Give me the good news."
"They're going to name a disease after you."
Recently, the OS/2 world received both some good news and bad news. Unlike Dan above,
let me begin with the bad news: Indelible Blue, a stalwart OS/2 retailer and supporter,
closed their doors on May 31st. It is not that Indelible Blue lost faith in OS/2 as a
product, it was simply an economical decision based on a dwindling OS/2 market and a
slowdown in the economy. Regardless, their presence in the OS/2 community will be
sorely missed. Whereas other OS/2 resellers have come and gone, Indelible Blue had
perhaps the most prominent presence in the international marketplace as an OS/2
retailer. Consequently, their departure is most troubling.
As Indelible Blue closes its doors, a new company has been founded by the owners of Indelible Blue, Prism Data Works, which will be handling fulfillment of WarpUP and eComStation orders. Although the mission of Prism is not entirely clear yet (it looks like they'll be involved with application development and web services), it is certain that they will not be a catalog service as offered by Indelible blue.
GOOD NEWS
The good news is that eComStation from Serenity Systems International has finally gone "golden" and will begin shipping in July. As I discussed in my November editorial, eComStation (or simply "eCs") is an independent effort to resell OS/2 with the latest FixPaks and extra goodies as a client-server solution to the SOHO market.
Serenity Systems has recently been demonstrating the final release of eCs to various OS/2 user groups. Of interest, the Southern California OS/2 Users Group (SCOUG) recently had such a demonstration and prepared an analysis (click HERE to read the report) which pointed out both strengths and weaknesses of the product. Included in the reported weaknesses were:
There was also some criticism about eCs' installation program, but anything has to be better than what IBM left us. One item worth mentioning is that eCs includes a bootable CD which allows a user to demonstrate eCs and related programs on any PC, included those equipped with Windows.
One item that concerned me was the last minute exclusion of Project Odin (for support of Win32 applications) from eCs which was done due to legal reasons. To me, the incorporation of Project Odin into the product, particularly during installation, was one of the more attractive features of eCs when it was proposed.
It was also reported by SCOUG that eCs may be migrating to other operating systems in the future, such as Windows and Linux. This is somewhat disturbing to OS/2 purists, but it appears Serenity is hedging its bets for the future by providing a migration path for its customers.
Despite all this, Serenity Systems Director of New Business Development, Bob St.John, remains optimistic and has charged his group to pound the pavement to drum up business. He also expects to be making some product announcements in the near future about agreements with other vendors to supply additional application support (one is that they plan to add HOBSoft's HOBLink X/11 for OS/2 to the eCS desktop) and hopefully will have the product available in July.
Personally, I wish Serenity every success.
Keep the Faith!
Copyright © M&JB 2001
