I think IBM assumes that most of these companies
will migrate to the AS/400 because it will cost them less than to go to other
platforms.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, May 06, 2000 6:37
PM
Subject: RE: Discontinuance of support
for the *M36
DAve,
At 5/5/00 10:38 AM -0400, you wrote:
M36, on the other hand, is a virtual machine
defined way down deep in the SLIC. I would guess (based on stuff I
read about it when they introduced the 236 machines) that parts of it
might need to be hardware specific, which means that it would need
attention with every new model line produced. That's where they
would be able to save some cost and simplify the product by dropping the
*M36 support. The hardware connection is speculative on my part,
but it's clear from the way they work that there's almost nothing shared
between the *M36 and the 36EE implementations - not even the technical
skills to keep bringing them forward from one release to the
next. Interesting. I agree that this is probably
the case. *But* if you look at the announced plans for OS/400 (this is
going back a while, but the basic premise remains) and you will see that the
ability to host guest OSs are part of that plan.
Back to the
*M36. SSP is stable. *The M36 is stable. I don't know how
many S/36 and *M36 accounts there are out there, but I would venture to say
it's significant. My guess is 50K - 100K!! They are paying
customers - hardware, software, services and loyalty. Ah yes, loyalty to
IBM. How long can IBM jerk these customers around before they run to
some other platform?
-mark
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