Re: V3R1 to V4R2 -- MIDRANGE-L

Here you can find an article about the plans that IBM has about upgrades
to V4R2 from previous versions.
It has been copied from an electronic newsletter supported by News/400:

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IBM'S E-JUMP ZIPS V2R3 SHOPS DIRECTLY TO V4R2
IBM's project e-Jump, tentatively announced earlier this month, 
is shaping up into a big carrot for V2R3 users. The project will 
add new functions to IBM's Enhanced Upgrade Assistant (EUA) tool 
that will let CISC-based V2R3 customers migrate to RISC-based 
AS/400e boxes with V4R2 in a direct, one-step process.

"With V4R2, there's really a good opportunity here for our 
customers who are sitting back with older releases because we 
haven't had a compelling reason for them to upgrade yet," 
explains Jelan Heidelberg, IBM senior software engineer and co-
author of IBM's CISC-to-RISC roadmap. "I think of it as a carrot 
and a stick. The stick is the lack of Year 2000 compliance in 
V2R3 and lack of support from IBM. The carrot with V4R2 is a 
tremendous new set of offerings."

Some of the key new features in V4R2 include native Domino, Java 
server capabilities, and NT on the IPCS. In addition, the model 
170 "Invader" boxes announced with V4R2 have an attractive 
price/performance ratio. IBM believes most V2R3 customers who 
upgrade to V4R2 will move to the 170 because the size and price 
are right.

Using e-Jump, which will be available by June 1, includes rolling 
in a brand new AS/400e box that will help make the upgrade a less 
expensive move for many of the 100,000-plus V2R3 boxes in the 
world. In many cases, the V2R3 systems are maxed-out and don't 
even have the hardware to install V3R2. Officially, IBM also has 
upgrade charges to go from V2 to V3.

IBM is updating the order-planning part of EUA to support the new 
e-Jump upgrade path and to calculate the disk space requirements 
and estimated upgrade times correctly. The new tool ensures that 
files used by IBM licensed programs will be migrated correctly, 
with file format changes intact, from V2R3 to V4R2. The changes 
to EUA are minimal, so customers and Business Partners can apply 
current upgrade skills to project e-Jump immediately, without 
having to worry about learning something new.

What about V3R1 and V3R6 users? The only thing IBM will say is 
that it understands the need these users have for an easy path to 
V4R2 and is looking at a similar offering for them. "Those 
customers don't have the same pain as V2R3 customers, and if they 
have already paid for V3, more of them have the hardware that 
they can take to V4R2 -- so that's why we're fixing the V2R3 pain 
first," Heidelberg notes.
-- Chris Miller, NEWS/400 Web Editor
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-------------------------------------
M� Elena V�zquez
mailto:maena@correo.com
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