The Gordian Knot

It’s been a little over two months since the announcement by SirsiDynix to abandon the 8.0 Horizon product line. Six groups of customers remain in its wake:

• 8.0 customers, who were live, beta, or in process of meeting paid milestones as early implementers of the 8.0 product;
• Horizon customers, who, more or less, save about 50 4.0 HIP installations, were on what they thought was a stable, anchor product;
• Dynix Classic customers, mostly large consortia, who know they’re on a stable product, but were waiting for 8.0 to be delivered in order to more smoothly migrate to a consortial-designed product;
• Sirsi customers, who, in retrospect, were either amused, attentive, or angered over all the attention the 8.0 Horizon product was getting, possibly to the detriment of their own Unicorn line;
• the rest of the ILS customers of vendors around the world, who were waiting to see if 8.0 might be what they have been waiting for;
• and then, well, the vendors and VARS, in their own right, the “customers” of Dynix, for whom VAR relationships and add-on products and services to core Dynix and Horizon customers, are, to be blunt, their business.

A shroud of legality envelopes many of the first- and last-bulleted customers above, leaving the rest of the folks to wonder what the heck has hit them. Several libraries are probably still wondering after rounds of “vendor demos”, as probably are most of the vendors who came in to do the demonstrations.

Now all eyes are encouraged to wait for ALA; Washington, DC, an unlikely wayside layover on the path to Rome.

Ever so slowly, regional user groups are once again meeting to test the waters, to see what, if anything, can be demonstrated; what, if anything, can be believed; what, if anything, can be achieved. OZSDUG, the morphed OZDUG with an “S” for Sirsi, meets next week, Tuesday, June 5, at the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, Missouri. Kansas City has been aptly coined a “crossroads” city, and so over 50 people from Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Utah will convene — Dynix, Horizon, and Unicorn users — close to the point where the Overland Trails branched west to new opportunites and new frontiers.

Notice I didn’t say “new vistas”. We have great sunsets in Kansas, as I’m sure the Oklahoma and Missouri people would agree. We really don’t have vistas, and rarely have summits. (Sometimes we’re just lucky enough to find a cafeteria tray and have a hill nearby for sledding!) We have opportunities and frontiers. We understand the “road to x” analogies. Most of us, from smaller towns than Kansas City, have broad, long, main streets. Only a few have the requisite sleeping dog in the middle of the intersection. We are proud of our small towns, and frequently watch the beauty and power of nature descend on our streets.

Some of us, on the 8.x frontier, sort of got hung out by the sunset a few months ago, as the sun slammed into the earth and plunged us into a very long night.

Will customers of Dynix be happy to travel down the Road to Rome? The tenor of OZSDUG next week will point the way. For more information on OZSDUG, contact Natasha Stephan at http://www.lindahall.org