Re: Convincing executives of character code perils

From: Tex Texin (texin@progress.com)
Date: Tue Oct 24 2000 - 20:31:21 EDT


Did you express your concerns about introducing
additional architectures into your configuration, when you went from
single platform to multi-platform?

Weren't the execs concerned about
interoperation between systems with such different code pages
as EBCDIC and ASCII?

Did those ready-aim-fire execs proceed ahead undaunted into the
perilous world of both batch and interactive processing?

And they went ahead anyway? Hmmm...

Maybe this time temper your cry of wolf
and instead offer solutions instead of fears.

Suggest Unicode as the right way to accomplish an integration
of all languages potentially needed by the corporation, not
just Fr. Ger., Span....

Be a positive force for change.

(And by the way, isn't crying wolf, a euphemism for
sounding a false alarm as opposed to a real alarm?
If you are tempering this false alarm, it is the right
thing to do.)

Signed,
not you.

"J. P." wrote:
>
> Articulating and expressing concerns to company
> executives about the perils associated with managing
> multiple character sets is DAUNTING task. The company
> would like to move ahead regardless, which tells me we
> haven't done a good job of educating them.
>
> I'm trying to temper my cry of "WOLF", while trying to
> educate executives on the RISKS of introducing a
> foreign lanugage other than ENGLISH - French, German,
> Spanish.
>
> We're a multiplatform company (IBM mainframe, NT's,
> Unix, etc.) with a significant amount of programmed
> integration across platforms, managed centrally. Data
> exchange and integration is present across all
> platforms in many instances and is done both
> interactively and in batch or background.
>
> Localization aside, how have you communicated issues
> and risks associated with introduction of a Western
> European language?
>
> How have you sold your EXECUTIVES on the perils of
> this READY-FIRE-AIM mentality?
>
> Signed appropriately so,
> Me
>
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-- 

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