Users are unimpressed by the quality of IBM’s software packages, according to a recent Xephon survey published in its research journal, Insight IBM. 150 sites worldwide responded to the survey, which judged 53 widely-used packages on a rating scale of one to five – poor to excellent respectively. Chief findings include the fact that seven of the 10 lowest scoring packages, including the worst-rated of all, came from IBM. Similarly, of the 14 products that gained a good rating of four, none came from IBM. Only five of the 20 IBM packages examined gained a better than average score. NetView, with an overall rating of 3.96 proved IBM’s most popular package; however, its chief rival, Cincom’s Netmaster clocked up a corresponding score of 4.33. Major software suppliers – 24 in all – were also rated in terms of support, quality, and value for money. On this basis, IBM came fourteenth, eighteenth and twentieth respectively. Shreds of comfort may be found in the discovery that its hardware remains relatively popular. On quality, IBM came third to National Advanced Systems and Amdahl, while on support it was placed fifth, behind Amdahl, NAS, Fujitsu and Siemens. On hardware value for money, however, it came nineteenth on a list headed by NAS, Siemens and Amdahl. Nevertheless, around 50% of the software licences listed by survey respondents were supplied by IBM. This would suggest that fears for future compatibility, the major reason for choosing IBM software cited in an earlier Xephon survey, still holds true to.cw 8 day. The most attractive feature of many IBM software packages seems to be the IBM label concluded Mark Lillycrop, the editor of Insight IBM.
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