Re: "Microsoft owns 23 AS/400s"

> In a meeting yesterday a chief scientist with IBM said "Yes,
> Microsoft uses still AS/400s. They own 23 of them and are
> upgrading to new ones this year."
> He said the programs are all written by Microsoft programmers
> and in fact are very well written programs and run extremely well.

About six months ago, during an interview with MS, I asked about their
business use of AS/400s.

The response (nearly verbatim except for the last sentence where an IBMer
was mentioned) was:

We are phasing them out. Last I heard we only have 3-4 on line in Redmond -
down from 18 WW. The only thing keeping them in place is the WW rollout of
SAP. The question is "How many NEW machines is MS buying?" IBM will report
new machines procured by MS but those are test machines for SNA Server (20s,
30s, 40s and 50s) and lab machines to demonstrate SNA connectivity. ...the
new machines purchased were P03s by the SNA Team for demo purposes.

How many AS/400's MS uses and what it really uses them for will forever only
be truly documented as AS/400 urban legend of the highest order.

rp


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