The AS/400 - Isn't that an old green-screen computer?

"Only if you want it to be." Use that response if you work in an IT Dept and hear competitors, or your own managers, trying to make a case for moving off of the platform. Not "They stopped selling AS/400s more than a decade ago" followed by a history lesson. Why? Because the 1st answer begs the question - "What do you mean?", whereas the 2nd answer means I'm going to have to listen to a boring history lesson.

I'm bringing this up because if IBM is going to rely on people who already use the machine to be their sales reps then it should teach them how to be good at it.

The answer to "What do you mean?" would be something along the lines of, "Just like Windows XP was followed by Windows 7 and Windows 10, the AS/400 was followed by several things, the latest of which is IBM i. It can use the programming languages other machines use, like Java, PHP, C, C++, Python, Perl, REXX, Pascal, Smalltalk, SQL, Basic, Fortran, Ruby, Javascript, PL/1 etc.. etc..." (you can stop when you see their eyes glazing over) "and you can run all of the other popular operating systems on it like Linux, AIX and Windows if you want to too."

Then whoever you're talking to will probably say something like "it would cost too much to buy that new version of the system", and 9 times out of 10 the correct response would be - "You've already got it. We aren't calling it that because people just got used to the old name. If you want us to start calling it by its right name we can do it. If you want to get rid of the green screens we can do that too."

If someone says it's getting too hard to find people who know how to use the machine just point them to the Hiring Board (https://goo.gl/HZx16J) where everyone who's on it knows how to use it.

If someone says no one else is using it just point them to the online Tableau (https://goo.gl/FV2Ejd) that shows details about the companies using it by state.

If anyone needs examples to prove you're not full of crap show them these sites which were built using only this version of the platform - https://www.fieldexit.com, https://www.iexlsoftware.com, and https://blog.profoundlogic.com/before-after-ibmi-modernization.

And if all of that doesn't convince them to stay on the platform then point them towards the future instead of talking about the past. Something like, "Oh yeah, and our computer can talk to Watson when we need it to to help us with a programming problem if we have one." Almost everyone knows what Watson is now, thanks to IBM's marketing efforts, and they know it's the future. It should make everyone feel more comfortable if they find out that they're already there.