Haven't heard much about the world of the IBM AS/400 much lately?I hadn't either. I attended a recent IBM briefing to catch up on developments in this world, hear about recent accomplishments and the product direction going forward.
The AS/400 design focuses solely on business processing.The machine does not even purport to handle scientific applications and is not found on the desktop. IBM promotes the AS/400 for business applications, as a print and file server, as a Domino server, as a web server and as a Java platform.
Many believe that the AS/400 is only intended for mom & pop firms like Joe's Neighborhood Car Parts. While lack of scalability may be an issue for some, I was surprised to learn that large companies like Shell Canada and Allstate Insurance run large numbers of AS/400 machines with hundreds of concurrent users.
The AS/400 chief scientist and architect Dr. Frank Soltis and his marketing counterpart Mr. Malcolm Haines conducted the briefing.They described the AS/400 as IBM's best-kept secret.Through sharply contrasting styles, they did their best to impress upon the audience that the AS/400 is a wonderful machine, that the install base is growing, {that IBM management is committed to it} and that we should expect many more advances in the future.
Mr. Malcolm Haines used multi-media extensively in his feel-good presentation.He showed off AS/400 print, billboard and TV advertising. He even showed a taxi painted entirely with the AS/400 advertising slogan.His concluding slide was entirely blank to drive home the point that there are a few things that you won't receive with the AS/400.These include viruses, hacker intrusions, unplanned downtime and boring advertising.
Dr. Frank Soltis, by contrast, used not a single slide.He just leaned on the projector with his elbow and talked in an articulate, yet folksy manner.He exhibited an engaging, comfortable style that one rarely sees in an obviously brilliant engineer.Dr. Soltis characterized the AS/400 as a very boring business machine.He said that: "it's unique in that it runs all the time.It does not require all the unemployed students in your area to keep it running."This is a good thing because find the unique skills to manage an AS/400 can be a problem. The AS/400 architecture is such that no one, regardless of privilege, can get at the OS.This feature precludes viruses and foils hackers.
Dr. Soltis described how customers could run multiple NT servers on a single AS/400 by installing multiple Intel processor boards in the AS/400 rack.He displayed noticeable pleasure from pointing out that using the AS/400 in this way delivers higher availability and better scalability than running NT on Intel.
According to an October 1998 Gartner Group study, the AS/400 achieves 99.94 percent availability. This amounts to 5.2 hours of unplanned availability per year.In contrast, UNIX servers averaged 23.6 hours and Windows NT managed only 224.5 hours. These statistics are backed up by the experience of Mr. Bill Bentley, a Calgary IT consultant who said: "Many of my customers put their AS/400 in a back room and forget about. Practically, nothing ever goes wrong."
Describing the advantages of the AS/400 was a delicate balancing act for Dr. Soltis.After all, IBM also sells a lot UNIX boxes so he couldn't very well slam those too much.Then there's the fact that IBM sells many Wintel servers so he couldn't be too critical of those.Also, IBM is a big re-seller of NT so he couldn't cast too many aspersions on NT even though Wintel servers are the principal competition to the AS/400.
{Over 600,000 AS/400 machines have now been installed in the world.That number may not impress some from the Wintel camp but it's substantial. This success makes the lack of visibility of the AS/400 in the media and the trade press rather puzzling.}
IBM came to recognize that their AS/400 message was too complex.Now, according to Mr. Haines, "IBM's message tuned more to people who believe that megahertz is a large rental car."Similarly, Dr. Soltis said that he and Malcolm have started to hold road shows because of our total frustration with the lack of marketing of the AS/400.
The AS/400 has a fiercely loyal following.The AS/400 has the highest customer and the highest re-purchase rate of all platforms. There are interesting parallels between the dedication and fanaticism of AS/400 aficionados and Apple Macintosh zealots.Neither is hugely popular but both machines are used by true believers in their superiority.Both camps are convinced that most of the world is on the wrong track and has been sold a bill of goods.
Yogi Schulz
Corvelle Consulting
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Calgary, Alberta
Canada T2P 2V7
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E-mail: YogiSchulz@<remove>corvelle.com
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