29
Fri, Nov
0 New Articles

Out of the Blue: Dueling Systems Wrestle for Mark

Commentary
Typography
  • Smaller Small Medium Big Bigger
  • Default Helvetica Segoe Georgia Times

I was looking for an analogy. Not that I misplaced one, you understand, just that I'm an analogy junkie. My fix came in a most unlikely spot; sitting in a dingy waiting room, while my car was being serviced. There, on a coffee table was-are you ready-a wrestling magazine. The cover featured two bovine brawlers in lycra tights, inflicting assorted bodily damage on each other, under the caption of "Main Event."

Not a bad analogy for what's going on in the midrange at IBM. At one time, IBM had a tidy tag-team: the AS/400 and the RS/6000. They displayed many of the same qualities a wrestler might covet: speed, power, and they looked stylish in blue. As grapplers go, they weren't even overweight, although several recent industry reports intimated that the AS/400 was, er, overpriced.

But like any two top competitors, sooner or later they wanted to find out just who was the best. So instead of beating up on the competition, they turned to bouncing each other off the ropes: a struggle consistent with the supposedly new, decentralized, leaner, meaner, competitive IBM. But old top-down habits die hard and, to management, it made little sense to have two competitors from the same locker room wearing each other out. So they assigned them to two different federations: The RS/6000 would wrestle primarily UNIX-class opponents, and the AS/400 would continue to beat up on competitors who previously grappled with its smaller S/3X cousins.

League rules were outlined in an IBM internal memo. It called the AS/400 the "natural follow-on" to the S/3X, and restricted marketing RS/6000 solutions (by default, the unnatural follow-on) "only when an individual [S/3X] customer does not want to migrate to the AS/400." Then, of course, they will market the RS/6000 "aggressively." But not too aggressively. The memo made it clear that IBM will not approve S/3X to RS/6000 conversion firms as business partners. In fact, IBMers were told "not [to] develop [a] proactive S/3X to RS/6000 marketing program." That's what you might call controlled aggression.

Except that, eh, IBM had already announced such a business partner, Universal Software Inc. of Newport Beach, California, which offers software for migrating S/36 applications to the RS/6000. Confused?

For answers, look no further than money. The AS/400 is being accommodated at the expense of the RS/6000 because IBM really can make a ton more money selling the AS/400. Given that product comparisons are tricky and that benchmarks tell a limited tale, still there are some troublesome questions.

While a customer may understand why the unlimited license version of OS/400 with its built-in relational database, communications, transaction processing monitor, security, et al costs eight times as much as frill-free AIX, it is hard to stretch that understanding to the stunning differences in the cost of DASD and memory.

A 64MB memory upgrade on the RS/6000 costs $16,000. The same upgrade on the 9406 AS/400 weighs in at $54,000. And just to confuse things further, the same 64MB memory upgrade costs only $23,760 if your AS/400 happens to be a 9402. For a customer, it's sort of like the experience you have when you go out for breakfast and the menu reads "1 egg = $1.00; 2 eggs = $1.20." You want to tell the waitress, "Give me the second egg."

Similarly, an additional 25GB of disk for the AS/400 costs about $180,000 more than comparable storage on the RS/6000. It will take some elegantly persuasive marketing to convince customers that these are not "apples-to-apples" comparisons. To John and Jane Q. Customer, DASD is DASD and memory is memory no matter what box they call home.

The base hardware price is also telling. The AS/400 E50 requires the buyer to forego a much bigger bag of shells than does a comparable RS/6000 560-$80,000 worth, to be exact.

So why the difference? In spite of the fact that for every complex question there is a simple answer (and that it is almost always wrong), allow me to suggest one: Pricing is directly reflective of the market in which a product competes. Originally, the AS/400 and the RS/6000 were developed to compete in very different and very specific markets: the former, a business system; the latter a high-powered workstation. AS/400 pricing is consistent with historic precedents for business systems. Its success attests to its competitive pricing. The RS/6000, on the other hand, had to break into a much different market which included budget-poor universities and a sophisticated R&D community that was only interested in engine size and unwilling to pay for bells or whistles.

Apparently, no one at IBM quite figured on the crossover potential for these two systems, especially the RS/6000. Sure, AIX is about as friendly as a stopover in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but what if someone were to slap a S/3X shell over it? Someone did. The aforementioned Universal Software offers Open RS/36 which ports application software, standard S/36 programming utilities and files to the RS/6000.

Alternately, the AS/400 wants to play in the open systems arena and is making noises about being POSIX compliant. Both systems are also going after the lucrative mainframe market. It is difficult to disguise something with 24GB of disk and 1GB of memory as a midrange system. So internal memos notwithstanding, the competition is likely to heat up. Customers like Eastman Kodak will see to that. Kodak must have seen some advantages to the "unnatural follow-on" because they are doing exactly what IBM is seeking to discourage: migrating from the S/36 to the RS/6000. And if there is profit to be made in aiding such migrations, firms will not be constrained by the lack of IBM Business Partner status.

Complicating the issue is the question of just who will be holding the tether on the combatants. Both Advanced Workstation Division (AWD), home to the RS/6000, and Application Business Systems (ABS), proud parents of the AS/400, would like to be spun off as independent units, much like the new Personal Computer Company. Rumor has it they share something less than a fraternal fondness. Once free of the squelching influence of MaBM, they will set their own agendas and compete in every market available to them. Therefore, IBM will likely hold on to both until dwindling customer demand-for such items as AS/400 memory and disk-forces prices down to RS/6000 levels. Once profit has been eliminated as a motive for keeping AWD and ABS in-line, they will probably be granted independent status.

Whichever way it goes, IBM is not likely to lose. They have two desirable products. Both will continue to succeed, and both will continue to compete. And that can only mean more choices and lower prices for the customer. Not as exciting as the Hulkster beating up on Junk Yard Dog perhaps, but then what is?

BLOG COMMENTS POWERED BY DISQUS

LATEST COMMENTS

Support MC Press Online

$

Book Reviews

Resource Center

  • SB Profound WC 5536 Have you been wondering about Node.js? Our free Node.js Webinar Series takes you from total beginner to creating a fully-functional IBM i Node.js business application. You can find Part 1 here. In Part 2 of our free Node.js Webinar Series, Brian May teaches you the different tooling options available for writing code, debugging, and using Git for version control. Brian will briefly discuss the different tools available, and demonstrate his preferred setup for Node development on IBM i or any platform. Attend this webinar to learn:

  • SB Profound WP 5539More than ever, there is a demand for IT to deliver innovation. Your IBM i has been an essential part of your business operations for years. However, your organization may struggle to maintain the current system and implement new projects. The thousands of customers we've worked with and surveyed state that expectations regarding the digital footprint and vision of the company are not aligned with the current IT environment.

  • SB HelpSystems ROBOT Generic IBM announced the E1080 servers using the latest Power10 processor in September 2021. The most powerful processor from IBM to date, Power10 is designed to handle the demands of doing business in today’s high-tech atmosphere, including running cloud applications, supporting big data, and managing AI workloads. But what does Power10 mean for your data center? In this recorded webinar, IBMers Dan Sundt and Dylan Boday join IBM Power Champion Tom Huntington for a discussion on why Power10 technology is the right strategic investment if you run IBM i, AIX, or Linux. In this action-packed hour, Tom will share trends from the IBM i and AIX user communities while Dan and Dylan dive into the tech specs for key hardware, including:

  • Magic MarkTRY the one package that solves all your document design and printing challenges on all your platforms. Produce bar code labels, electronic forms, ad hoc reports, and RFID tags – without programming! MarkMagic is the only document design and print solution that combines report writing, WYSIWYG label and forms design, and conditional printing in one integrated product. Make sure your data survives when catastrophe hits. Request your trial now!  Request Now.

  • SB HelpSystems ROBOT GenericForms of ransomware has been around for over 30 years, and with more and more organizations suffering attacks each year, it continues to endure. What has made ransomware such a durable threat and what is the best way to combat it? In order to prevent ransomware, organizations must first understand how it works.

  • SB HelpSystems ROBOT GenericIT security is a top priority for businesses around the world, but most IBM i pros don’t know where to begin—and most cybersecurity experts don’t know IBM i. In this session, Robin Tatam explores the business impact of lax IBM i security, the top vulnerabilities putting IBM i at risk, and the steps you can take to protect your organization. If you’re looking to avoid unexpected downtime or corrupted data, you don’t want to miss this session.

  • SB HelpSystems ROBOT GenericCan you trust all of your users all of the time? A typical end user receives 16 malicious emails each month, but only 17 percent of these phishing campaigns are reported to IT. Once an attack is underway, most organizations won’t discover the breach until six months later. A staggering amount of damage can occur in that time. Despite these risks, 93 percent of organizations are leaving their IBM i systems vulnerable to cybercrime. In this on-demand webinar, IBM i security experts Robin Tatam and Sandi Moore will reveal:

  • FORTRA Disaster protection is vital to every business. Yet, it often consists of patched together procedures that are prone to error. From automatic backups to data encryption to media management, Robot automates the routine (yet often complex) tasks of iSeries backup and recovery, saving you time and money and making the process safer and more reliable. Automate your backups with the Robot Backup and Recovery Solution. Key features include:

  • FORTRAManaging messages on your IBM i can be more than a full-time job if you have to do it manually. Messages need a response and resources must be monitored—often over multiple systems and across platforms. How can you be sure you won’t miss important system events? Automate your message center with the Robot Message Management Solution. Key features include:

  • FORTRAThe thought of printing, distributing, and storing iSeries reports manually may reduce you to tears. Paper and labor costs associated with report generation can spiral out of control. Mountains of paper threaten to swamp your files. Robot automates report bursting, distribution, bundling, and archiving, and offers secure, selective online report viewing. Manage your reports with the Robot Report Management Solution. Key features include:

  • FORTRAFor over 30 years, Robot has been a leader in systems management for IBM i. With batch job creation and scheduling at its core, the Robot Job Scheduling Solution reduces the opportunity for human error and helps you maintain service levels, automating even the biggest, most complex runbooks. Manage your job schedule with the Robot Job Scheduling Solution. Key features include:

  • LANSA Business users want new applications now. Market and regulatory pressures require faster application updates and delivery into production. Your IBM i developers may be approaching retirement, and you see no sure way to fill their positions with experienced developers. In addition, you may be caught between maintaining your existing applications and the uncertainty of moving to something new.

  • LANSAWhen it comes to creating your business applications, there are hundreds of coding platforms and programming languages to choose from. These options range from very complex traditional programming languages to Low-Code platforms where sometimes no traditional coding experience is needed. Download our whitepaper, The Power of Writing Code in a Low-Code Solution, and:

  • LANSASupply Chain is becoming increasingly complex and unpredictable. From raw materials for manufacturing to food supply chains, the journey from source to production to delivery to consumers is marred with inefficiencies, manual processes, shortages, recalls, counterfeits, and scandals. In this webinar, we discuss how:

  • The MC Resource Centers bring you the widest selection of white papers, trial software, and on-demand webcasts for you to choose from. >> Review the list of White Papers, Trial Software or On-Demand Webcast at the MC Press Resource Center. >> Add the items to yru Cart and complet he checkout process and submit

  • Profound Logic Have you been wondering about Node.js? Our free Node.js Webinar Series takes you from total beginner to creating a fully-functional IBM i Node.js business application.

  • SB Profound WC 5536Join us for this hour-long webcast that will explore:

  • Fortra IT managers hoping to find new IBM i talent are discovering that the pool of experienced RPG programmers and operators or administrators with intimate knowledge of the operating system and the applications that run on it is small. This begs the question: How will you manage the platform that supports such a big part of your business? This guide offers strategies and software suggestions to help you plan IT staffing and resources and smooth the transition after your AS/400 talent retires. Read on to learn: