Alex,

Those are the key questions, aren't they?

It would all boil down to acticipated labor savings over using the
numerous workarounds we currently employ.  For that reason, it would
probably be more valuable to new TSM administrators.

For experienced admins like myself with a set of tools currently used to
get around the web client's limitations, a full-featured GUI would be a
harder sell to the people who write the checks.  Here's why...

I spent the better part of two days getting the ODBC link to work; then
spent about a day creating my "GUI Spreadsheet" in Excel.  I've also spent
quite a lot of time learning the admin commands and their parameters and
options.  None of that effort would be recovered by my adoption of a new
GUI now.  The only savings for me would the a little bit of time saved
from not having to switch tools.  If I had to guess, I'd say that would be
less than 10 minutes per day in my case.  On days with just routine stuff
happening, it might not save me five minutes.

On the other hand, if I was a new admin, having the GUI would allow me to
avoid almost all the work cited in the previous paragraph.  It could
easily add up to a person-week or more.  The employer would save the
salary associated with that time as well as recovering the opportunity of
that time.  Counting both benefits, the savings could easily reach ten to
twenty thousand dollars.

Just my two cents.

Tab Trepagnier
TSM Administrator
Laitram Corporation










Alex Paschal <AlexPaschal AT FREIGHTLINER DOT COM>
Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>
08/22/2002 12:48 PM
Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager"


        To:     ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
        cc:
        Subject:        Re: Web Admin Interface - grrr


What kind of market is there for a working, currently supported GUI?
Basically, if you all banded together, could you commission somebody to
recreate and keep up a new Admin GUI that's relevant to the current
version
of TSM, that doesn't have the weaknesses of the Web interface?

Or maybe somebody like Lindsay Morris (who already has a development group
familiar with TSM) can develop a Admin GUI product fairly easily?  Do you
think there are enough GUI users who
a) Are willing to pay for a license for this GUI?
b) Are willing to pay some sort of maintenance cost to keep it current?

Alex