>this "the old admin GUI is much better than the Web interface" subject=20
>pops up now and then.
>The poster of the first message always dreams of a Windows or Java GUI
>that supports the latest TSM server (btw I'm dreaming too).
>A few minutes later the list gets drowned by "me too" messages.
>
>I think there was/is a SHARE requirement for a *real* admin interface
>(can you filter your tape volumes with the web interface?).
>I don't understand why Tivoli isn't listening to their customers.
>Tivoli should start a survey on how many customers would like to have
>such an animal and on what platform. Based on this results it should be
>easy to provide a GUI for the platform users want.
>
>So please Tivoli, LISTEN!

Thomas - I share your frustration.  How to get results may require another
         approach...
Product such as TSM are Big Bucks, Enterprise products.  As such, they are
marketed to the level of people in the organization who can authorize such
expenditures - customer company executives.  Executives respond to Enterprise
issues: competitiveness, saving lots of money, nice reports, trimming staff.
Issues that affect us lowly technicians way down in the company engine room,
where we shovel coal into the company boilers, don't get any exposure or
attention.  To get such attention, those issues have to get up to a higher
management level where those managers, whom IBM will respond to, will feed
the issues to the IBM rep and thus get attention.  You have to expend efforts
to make a written case, understandable to higher-ups, that the current
product situation is impairing administration and costing the company lost
productivity, etc.

SHARE is certainly an avenue; but as they say, "Money talks."

  Richard Sims, BU