Charles wrote:

>The IBM'ers have said to me that there are no plans to discontinue the
>iSereies (formally AS400) and that the consensus at IBM is that they can't
>imagine such a thing.  BTW, I'm doing a migration talk at HP World on
>migrating MPE applications to Linux and Windows.  My demo machine will be
>an iSeries that will be running Linux in a partition and Window on a board
>inside of the same machine!  As an extra added attraction we will be
>demonstrating the same MPE COBOL, VPLUS, IMAGE  application running on
>Linux, Windows and the iSeries!

>Since running these different OS's is possible, if the iSeries ceases to be
>popular enough IBM can reduce the size of its dedicated OS staff and reduce
>development on that OS.  They are now and have been integrating it with
>Windows, Linux and AIX all along.  It could still be sold and supported by
>IBM for 20-30 years after that and they could still profit from it.  It's a
>different set of economics than the HP 3000.

I'm sure the ibm folks have done a good job of keeping this platform going,
especially given the rather large installed base.

While I can see this would be of interest to their installed base and to
others who might have an internal MIS shop focus and want the stability of a
cobol friendly mid-range proprietary system, I don't find the economics of a
proprietary platform working to the advantage of an ISV who isn't already on
the box. In the small/mid-range it comes down to TCO and ISV's who can
deploy on more standard solutions will have a much lower TCO.

By reading info on the net (as you have done) it becomes clear to me that
the iseriesinstalled base is struggling with very similar things with ibm
and this platform that we have struggled with hp over the years. And ibm has
publicly indicated the sales for this platform are driven primarily by the
installed base. Regardless of what you can run on the box with regard to
o/s, at some point you come to the point of asking the fateful question:
'why would I choose that box to run ...'. Just like you don't choose an hp
e3k to be your web server you aren't going to pay a premium for an iseries
to be your web server. And who would choose an iseries as their Linux
platform of choice? Only existing customers, not new business. And that
leads to the point in time where the vendor (ibm) has to make the hard
choices. And currently ibm is having to make hard choices.

Market forces/pulls can be very difficult to overcome. Just ask Sun Micro
who is seeing 15-25k smaller Solaris boxes be converted to Linux on ia-32
because the customers of the Sun partner want/need a lower cost solution.
The Sun partner prefers Solaris/Sun, but is being forced to move because of
their customer base needs.

My prediction is that over time there will not be computer companies as we
have come to understand them. As the industry moves toward more standard
hardware and software plumbing there will fewer and fewer companies who can
own the entire solution stack from the bottom (chip development) to the o/s
that runs on the integrated systems developed by the company. This will have
a negative impact on companies with little other business (sun/sgi for
example) and create interesting choices for companies like ibm. I believe hp
understands what is happening and is siezing upon the opportunities first by
their investment in ia-64 and second in the merger with compaq.

Whether this is good or not is not the point. The point is to understand
this potential and be prepared to take advantage of the opportunities that
will present themselves.

This is why I think porting an mpe solution to os/400 is nothing more than
treading water and not affording you the potential to sieze upon the
opportunities that will present themselves over the next 2-5 years.

Something I always like to remember as I evaluate choices and the
'solutions' that are being proposed by individuals/vendors is to "follow the
money". When it comes to business people are rarely altruistic - more
typically they have their financial interests placed foremost in their
minds. This being recently evidenced by cases of investment firms touting
stocks publicly that they know are 'dogs'.

duane percox
'migrate smoothly and swiftly with intelligence and creativity'

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