Re: IBM overhauls iSeries for the long haul

[Vern Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My home insurance agent (Farmers) had an S/36 in his office. Farmers was 
trying to get him to put in a 400 sometime in the 90s - he refused -- I 
think he had to pay for it, and the 36 was doing all he needed, thank you. 
I haven't asked him lately what he has now.

So Farmers at one time was trying to replace 36s, not go central.

Besides, it saved on his heating bill.

Vern

At 09:22 AM 8/13/2004, you wrote:
> If you had that much invested in hardware and software
> and training, I doubt they went over to the "dark side".
>
> These insurance companies generate volumes of data that
> can not be imagined. They have never built a pc server
> farm that can handle that sort of volume.
>
> Insurance companies typically were MVS shops until the
> S/36 came along. The S/36 allowed them to "spread" the
> load out and reduce the HUGE data centers that were
> required. The S/36 could process the agent data and then
> send summaries to the home office every night. This was
> a really big change.
>
> I suspect a great many remain in the AS/400 world.
>
> Since the 400 finally got big enough to handle fairly
> large loads, it actually starting cutting into the MVS
> world. I suspect many companies have now gone back the
> other way and put terminals in the agent offices and
> they are all connected to much larger network of 400's.
>
> You don't think IBM came out with that 890 just for
> your local mom and pop distribution business ????
>
>
> Chuck Lewis wrote:
>
> > So did they all go the AS/400 route ?