Re: "Microsoft owns 23 AS/400s"

[John Earl <johnearl@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

In 1994 headhunters in the Seattle area were calling AS/400
geeks looking for people to work on a project to help MS
migrate from AS/400 to NT.  It was billed as a 6-9 month
contract to phase all of the AS/400's out.  

Last I heard, (and it has not yet been independently
confirmed) they never finished that project, so the WW
distribution has been outsourced to an independent service
provider.  The independent service proviser is running the
same source code on AS/400's.... But Hey, they're not
officially part of Microsoft. :)

jte

Roger Pence wrote:
> 
> > 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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--
John Earl                       johnearl@toolnet.com

PowerTech Toolworks             206-575-0711
PowerLock Network Security      www.toolnet.com
The 400 School                  www.400school.com
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