RE: uServer combo box (was NT vs AS/400)

I heard Dr. Soltis speak and he said that the PowerPC instruction set was
stored on a ROM and that a 390 instruction set could be put there.

Based on this kind of info and the IBM marketing direction of eServer (not
nSeries) I foresee a single hardware base that encompasses all the major
computing environments (IMHO *nix, OS/390, OS/400, NT). Perhaps some though
LPAR, maybe some through runtime environments, such as PASE. We know AS/400
and RS/6000 are mostly the same, and that PASE works by switching modes on
the same CPU. We know Linux is supposed to be supported in iSeries LPAR this
year. We know that NT is architected with Hardware Abstraction Layer like MI
to allow use on different processors, which was proven with the Alpha, so
therefore could be done for PowerPC. We have reason to believe OS/390 could
run there, and we know any kind of DASD can be emulated like the Sharks and
Iceburgs, and that iSeries is already being positioned as a possible SAN for
PCs with the IXS support.

So it's really not too big a jump for the high-dollar IBM camp to run
everything on one machine. I don't think the $10,000 PC is ever going to
have the guts to do this. What I mean is the PC vendors will never have the
financial incentive to make the investment that would be necessary to
support a bunch of environments that they don't care about anyway.

Is it worth enough to the big corporation to have this big expensive IBM box
that can run everything, rather than just use a bunch of inexpensive NT and
Linux boxes? It seems IBM is betting that it is with their "server
consolidation" push. I think IBM will retain current MF and 400 customers by
doing this, but still not pick up any of the new guys that started out with
NT or Linux and have all their applications there. I don't see these guys
ever wanting to add some CICS apps to their mix. Perhaps they can win some
new customers with the high availability argument and centralized management
tools.

It seems iSeries is ahead in many of these areas, but I don't think that
means OS/400 would necessarily end up on top.

-Marty

------------ original message ----------------------

Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 23:36:52 -0400
From: jpcarr@tredegar.com
Subject: Re: NT vs AS/400

... I believe that it could be technologically possible to even run MVS on
the
S-Star PowerPC.

Wouldn't it be something if OS/400 was the controlling partition on a
uServer that runs all of them? ...
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