Looking for Help in All the Right Places Online services fill vacuum left by user groups' demise
From "Migration",  Access to Wang, December 1994
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For as long as I have been involved in the information industry, I have also been immersed in user groups. Contact with user groups has provided me with a great deal of information and allowed me an avenue to share my experience with the rest of the Wang community.

It should be obvious that Wang user groups are in trouble. Our local user group dissolved nearly a year ago. Prior to that event, the executive board worked nearly two years to seek the interests of the membership and fill them with relevant meetings and newsletter articles. Sensing a change in interest among most of the members (at least in those who showed up for board meetings!), the group changed its focus to "open systems" - the only common denominator between all of the shops planning a change in environment. Apparently this change alienated all of the users who were only interested in Wang topics, while those planning new directions in hardware and software had little in common. The result was a slackening of interest and, eventually, the end of regular meetings.

On the national and international level, a similar process has been underway for some time. The United States Society of Wang Users (USSWU) - which began as a user revolt in reaction to Wang's control of the International Society of Wang Users (ISWU) - dissolved this year. Most local users groups were gone or severely weakened before then, including the powerful Chicagoland and Australian user groups. Ironically, it is ISWU - no longer a part of Wang marketing - that has survived. By the end of next year even ISWU may be gone, having hosted what many see as the last Wang conference last fall.

When most of the needs of a data processing operation were solved by a single vendor (Wang), user groups were a good way to get the information you needed to make your operation run smoothly. If you were having trouble getting a utility to run correctly, other users would be able to help you with their experience. If you were new to the system, experienced managers and programmers were willing to share their expertise with you. Without this perspective, you would have to rely on the advice of the vendor - who is not often forthright about shortcomings in the product.

These needs remain today. There are still a large number of VS shops out there, and new users inherit responsibility for existing systems every day. Though there have been few significant changes in VS products in the last ten years, Wang systems are as complex as most and require judgment and experience to operate effectively. Where can these users get the support they need?

Getting product support today

Many of us are busier than ever before, and most of our shops no longer deal primarily with Wang for support and new products. Together, these two facts offer some reasons why Wang user groups do not survive today: Wang systems do not play a large part in our lives, and it is unlikely that we would give up time from work or home to attend monthly meetings.

Since it is unlikely that user groups will ever again provide a strong forum for education and support, how can we replace this contact? One way I've been exploring is through online services like CompuServe, America Online, and the Internet. These services can offer personal contact with vendors and other users, software updates, and technical literature for the broad spectrum of products found in today's shops.

As we moved into the Unix environment, the number of vendors we work with rose dramatically. True, our shop already had a long history of third-party service and peripherals, but many portions of our environment are now supported by a multitude of small products. Our choice of environment - PCs attached to a Unix host through a TCP/IP network - meant that we were supporting not one but four environments:

• Host system (Unix): The Unix operating system, COBOL compiler, relational data base.

• Desktop PCs: Windows, MS-DOS, terminal emulator.

• Local Area Network: Network Operating System (Unix host), client networking software (PCs), networked applications (word processing, spreadsheets, electronic mail), terminal connection transport, network adapters (cards), network wiring to workstation.

• The Wang VS: Yes, we still run part of our business and all of our development from a VS 7310.

While some of these relationships were similar to those found in the VS world, the number of products meant that there were far more vendors involved. For example, in the VS world it is not normally necessary to purchase a terminal emulation package for locally- connected terminals; you would just buy Wang's product. In the Open Systems world, it is necessary to select not only a terminal product but also the underlying communications software (the transport) to connect to the host over the network. There were similar choices in applications (PC- or host-based word processing, data base management, and electronic mail), networks (protocol, Network Operating System, server type), workstation connection type (serial or network connections; twisted-pair or coaxial cable), and in many other areas.

The complexity of this environment appears daunting to those considering a move away from the VS or any other proprietary system, and it has doubled our support needs. For all of this effort, however, we now have far better solutions in the hands of our users and more interesting work. Remarkably, it all works: it is now possible to intersperse products from many sources without major problems.

When problems develop, however, they are much more difficult to diagnose. When a user complains about response time, the problem can be network traffic, an overburdened host system, a PC memory problem, a bad connection, poor integration of two unrelated PC software products, or nearly any other part of the system. Some products - especially PC software -are notorious for their sensitivity to the versions of related products, and solving the problem may require a new program version supplied by the vendor.

Getting connected

Online support falls into these three general categories:

• Direct contact with vendors: Electronic mail or "chat" systems where you can ask specific questions and receive support.

• Discussions with the user community: News forums and mailing lists where public discussions on products are held.

• Libraries: Repositories of programs, literature, and other files that can be copied to your system or reviewed online.

These three media can each replace part of the function of a user group, providing a forum for specific questions, a general review of the issues with other users, and access to solutions provided by others. Vendors who use e-mail for part of their product support usually respond quickly and often provide additional material (manuals, lists of frequently asked questions (FAQs), updated software versions) attached to their response. If you're interested in what kinds of issues other users have faced with specific products, check out the news groups on the Internet or vendor forums on the commercial services.

Unfortunately, each product environment has a preferred medium and you cannot rely on a single service. For example, users of Unix products often have strong ties to the Internet and prefer to be able to send and receive electronic mail for some product support, while most PC product vendors host vendor forums on the commercial services. If your product mix includes PC products, access to a commercial account - CompuServe, especially - is essential. Unix product support requires Internet access - preferably from an Internet provider, since the commercial services that offer Internet access (CompuServe, America Online, Delphi) limit the scope of that access and usually charge for information transfers.

Getting involved with an online service can be as simple as setting up a terminal emulation package on your PC or considerably more complex. CompuServe and America Online offer excellent graphical tools to access their services in addition to the traditional command prompt. Until recently, most Internet access was also driven by commands; now, there is much more interest in the World-Wide Web (WWW, or the Web) and a legion of text and graphical viewers that provide a comfortable point-and-shoot user interface. The most interesting of these new Web tools are those that use a dial-up connection known as SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) to pass TCP/IP network packets directly between the backbone of the Internet and your PC. "Web browsers" like Mosaic, Lynx, NetScape, Air Mosaic, and Cello are network applications and require direct connection to the Internet or a SLIP connection. SLIP is commonly available from local Internet providers but is more costly than a standard prompt account.

Finding information on networks is simpler on commercial services, since they can enforce their own hierarchy of information storage and retrieval. For example, CompuServe offers vendor forums that are easy to locate and use. Finding specific topics on the Internet remains difficult, since each site may be organized differently. The explosion of WWW services has eased this problem. For convenience, I have listed some of the computer-related and general Web "home pages" that should get you started. (By the way, there are over 70,000 known Web pages in the world.)

Welcome to the online age

While user group meetings are no longer a part of my life, I am enthusiastic about the possibilities offered by online access. The much-hyped Internet connections are particularly intriguing because of the breadth and depth of coverage they provide, and eye-popping visual Web viewers like Mosaic are making these sources more accessible. While not a complete solution to the need for user groups, online services are an acceptable substitute.

Figure 1: Recommended World-Wide Web Sites

Computer Vendor Sites

Digital Equipment home page
http://www.digital.com

Hewlett-Packard home page
http://www.hp.com/home.html

IBM home page
http://www.ibm.com

IBM Warp (OS/2)
http://www.austin.ibm.com/pspinfo/warp.html

Microsoft home page
http://www.microsoft.com

Sun home page
http://www.sun.com

General Sites, Introductions

Yahoo - A Guide to WWW (highly recommended)
http://akebono.stanford.edu/yahoo

Hot Topics from Amdahl
http://www.amdahl.com/internet/hot.html

Scout Report
http://www.internic.net/scout-report/

Le WebLouvre (The Louvre, Paris)
http://mistral.enst.fr/~pioch/louvre/

InterNIC's Pick of Top General Purpose Web Sites
http://www.internic.net/links/

Smithsonian Institution: FTP to the Smithsonian for images
ftp://photo1.si.edu/images

Figure 2: Tools for Getting Online

Item	Description
Personal computer	An IBM-compatible preferred; Macintosh OK.
Modem, phone line	Minimum 2400 baud (text only). 14,400-baud modem recommended for file downloads, required for SLIP.
Communications software	A terminal emulation package (Windows terminal, ProCOMM, etc.) with file transfer capabilities. Substitute a Winsock transport for SLIP service and TCP/IP client software (File Transfer Protocol (FTP) tools, World-Wide Web (WWW) browsers, mail and news readers, etc.). Many WWW and SLIP tools are free or low cost (shareware).
Access to online services	A contract with a commercial service (CompuServe, America Online, etc.) or an Internet provider. Costs may be fixed or variable, range from $10 to $50 per month (or more).