Many times over the years I have needed to download software from Developer works or Passport advantage etc. Something I experience all the time is that many IBM micro-sites dedicated to downloading demo materials are often slow and many re-tries are required. Even when using the download director, downloads are re-set or time out. I think that IBM should improve this experience for all. I have witnessed this issue for decades, and no real sign of improvement!
I think that IBM now they are heavily marketing Blue Mix (Could Services, which means software/services over the internet) should take a look at the users experience. Often download forms are not session persistent, i.e. a page refresh after a failed download, requires the user to register maybe 1-5 times all over again before a successful download is complete. How can you market to people to encourage cloud-based products when you can’t even deliver a consistent set of basic download services?
Industry professionals need to evaluate software, and not all have business partner accounts i.e. Software Access accounts. This means anyone learning for education purposes can literally chew days of download effort to get hold of software.
IBM, please make our experience easier. I suggest simpler technologies incorporated in the download micro-sites. Use other forms of large file distribution. Make registration forms session persistent (After all in the application-server space, the service behind it, all any good IBM consultant would recommend this to IBM clients) and make every download a nice experience.