I know this is somewhat long for a post here, but when I read this
I had the stragest feeling of deja' vu all over again.
A little creative search and replace all, and we would all think
this article was written about the 3000 (except for the parts about
vendor marketing support and commitment).

*****************************
Terry W. Simpkins
Director ISIT
Measurement Specialties
757-766-4278
[log in to unmask]
*****************************

TECHTARGET: The Information Architect
___________________________________
Builders of the 21st Century IT Infrastructure
Nov. 15, 2001

AS/400 keeps reinventing itself 
___________________________________

The tried and true AS/400 offers versatility, a solid performance
reputation -- and lower pricing.

By Johanna Ambrosio


Like Madonna, the AS/400 keeps reinventing itself. Around as a
platform for over 20 years, it was first known as the System/38, then
as the AS/400 and most recently is being called the iSeries. IBM
relaunched the computer family in October 2000 in a bid to build the
reputation of the servers as Internet machines of various stripes.

According to a January 2001 report by Summit Strategies, some 700,000
of the servers have been shipped. IBM claims that the iSeries is the
only server in the industry to allow customers to run four different
operating systems simultaneously: OS/400 (the native operating system
of the AS/400); Unix; Windows NT or Windows 2000; and Linux. IBM also
says the product line scales from a single processor to a 24-way
processor.

The machine's versatility and reputation for near-constant uptime
make it a great choice for anyone who wants to run a small or midsize
business and not worry about the details of how or why the platform
works. So says Rich Partridge, vice president of enterprise servers
at independent analyst firm D.H. Brown Associates Inc. in Port
Chester, NY., who also notes that "only IBM" is using the iSeries'
new moniker. Most everyone else is still calling it the AS/400.

Partridge explained more about the machine's key applications in the
corporate world in an inteview with TechTarget.

Q: Why are people buying them?
A: The AS/400 has a very loyal following. This customer base doesn't
usually worry about speeds and feeds, what MHz the chip is or what
the machine's cache is. Those attributes are not important, because
this customer base is typically not about pushing the
state-of-the-art. They want an application tailored to a particular
environment -- manufacturing, medical office, and so on. Typically, a
value-added reseller will customize and build the machine with the
correct hardware and software for the application. The customer drops
it in and runs it. These customers don't want to develop their own
significant IT expertise in-house, and they don't want the
inconvenience of melding together incompatible packages.

Q: What are the drawbacks to the AS/400?
A: In the past, one drawback had been a higher cost relative to other
computing platforms. The AS/400 wasn't a commodity, and it wasn't
something that you could look for in the back of the computer trade
publications and beat someone down for the best price. It wasn't like
the Windows/Intel world, where you can mix-and-match one of these and
one of those.

Q: You said this used to be a drawback. What's happened?
A: Some of this has changed. IBM has merged the underlying AS/400
hardware with its PowerRisc [Unix-based] series of machines, so now
it's the same underlying hardware for both families. IBM didn't want
to expend a lot of dollars on a unique chipset and separate
development, so this has been happening over the past two years. That
said, the AS/400's operating system does have different features and
protection modes from the PowerRisc family. And just because the
PowerRisc has the newest chip powering it, that doesn't mean the same
chip will be released for the AS/400 at the same time. The two
products have separate release cycles, so the same things aren't
available for both at the same time.

Q: And that means...?
A: You can't go out and find a gray-market PowerRisc box and then run
OS/400 on top of that. First, it may not work. Second, you wouldn't
be able to have the hardware and software certified and supported by
IBM or pretty much any third party.

Q: So, is the price of the AS/400 falling?
A: Yes, it's now more competitively priced. The customer base is
still more interested in the specific applications running on the
machine than they are a particular price/performance metric. But IBM
recognized that they might have lost some business to people that
were concerned with pricing and that were doing some comparison
shopping. So IBM addressed that by taking some costs out of the
underlying hardware. There's not a significant price differential --
the AS/400 still requires more handholding and more customization to
make sure the customer understands how it all goes together. This
could still make it more expensive than if a customer assembled an
application on his own, on an Intel/Windows platform.

About the author: Ambrosio is a freelance writer in Marlborough,
Mass. Reach her at mailto:[log in to unmask]

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