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-----Original Message-----Paul Tykodi
From: Frank Soltis [mailto:fsoltis@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 9:06 AM
To: Paul Tykodi
Subject: Re: Children of the 1970's - Great Operating Systems
Paul,
You hit it right on the head when you said:
Ultimately I believe the continued success of the iSeries platform will be
driven by its relevance to the continuing business needs of IBM customers
and not by hardware performance gains or simplified software licensing.
With the new announcements this week and the statement that it will commit
$500M to the platform over the next two years, IBM is both making a
statement of support for the iSeries and taking a big gamble. Why bother
to invest lots of money if the platform is going to die anyway? The reasons
for making this investment in an integrated platform are somewhat similar
to what happened in the 1970s.
During the 1970s only the biggest companies could afford to hire people
with the skills needed to support a mainframe-type of computer, such as
the S/370. This gave rise to the integrated platforms from DEC, HP and IBM
that didn't need the specialized staffs. Midrange customers fell in love with
these machines, because they were more accessible and far more
understandable to the people running the business. They also met the needs
of these businesses.
Integration was the order of the day. I remember when DEC introduced their
"All-in-One" offering in the middle 1980s that did both data processing
and office functions. IBM at the time said you needed separate systems for
office and data processing. DEC integrated the two, and their VAX systems
rapidly became the best selling midrange platform as a result. It took the
introduction of the AS/400 to bring us back into the game.
During this same time, IBM was also trying to sell S/370s into midrange
companies with some fairly low-cost hardware models. The 9370 model, for
example, came out in 1987. It was a great piece of hardware for mid-sized
companies at a very competitive price. Yet it failed in the marketplace.
Hardware cost was not a problem for many smaller companies; it was the
support costs.
Then in the late 1980s came the PC servers, and we all became computer
operators. Suddenly, anyone could manage a PC. Why do we need the
integrated servers when PCs are so easy to manage? This was the beginning
of the decline of the integrated midrange servers from DEC, HP and to some
extent IBM. There was another factor, however, that led to the decline,
and that was the rise of Unix.
Prior to 1990, Unix was only found on engineering workstations. Not to be
outdone by the PCs, the Unix proponents argued that their systems could
also be managed by anyone (a claim that is still not true for most
businesses). They also argued that Unix systems are higher performance
than PC systems, because they ran on RISC hardware. Both DEC and HP decided
that it was cheaper to use Unix on their computers than to continue to invest
in their own operating systems. It was the customers who forced DEC and HP to
keep some level of investment in VMS and MPE, otherwise both of these
operating systems would have died much sooner. IBM, on the other hand,
decided to continue investing in both AIX and OS/400. Today, LINUX is seen
by some inside and outside of IBM as the ultimate operating system. Only
time will tell.
An interesting thing happened on the way to the 21st century. Customers
discovered that the proliferation of the PC and Unix servers during the
1990s have created some very complex "infrastructures" (a word hardly
anyone used in the 1990s). Managing all the servers is complex and costly.
Does this sound like the 1970s? Maybe we need some integrated servers?
Maybe they could even manage themselves?
IBM now says the next generation of server for e-business on demand must
have four specific attributes. It must be integrated, open, virtualized
and autonomic. Without getting into too much detail, IBM has only two servers
that can even claim to be close to having these attributes. They are the
zSeries and the iSeries. Not too many people believe that the zSeries is
the best choice for the midrange, so that leaves the iSeries.
IBM's commitment to the iSeries was demonstrated by this week's
announcements. It is being positioned right in the middle of IBM's move to
e-business on demand. The price reductions and the continuing investments
that are being made is a pretty strong statement that IBM believes this
integrated platform will be relevant for existing and new customers in the
future. Once again, only time will tell if this is true.
Frank
_______________________________
Frank G Soltis
IBM iSeries Chief Scientist
Rochester, Minnesota
e-mail: fsoltis@xxxxxxxxxx
"Paul Tykodi"
<paul@intermate-u To: Frank
Soltis/Rochester/IBM@IBMUS
s.com> cc:
Subject: Children of the
1970's - Great Operating Systems
01/21/2003 02:01
PM
Dear Dr. Soltis,
Recently with the iSeries division change in general manager announcement
followed by the announcement of the new iSeries hardware/software, I have
seen a number of discussions occurring on the midrange-l mailing list
about the future of the iSeries server platform. It happens that my experience
with IBM Midrange hosts dates back to 1986 and includes the S/38, AS/400,
and iSeries. Initially I worked for Fidelity Investments and was an end
user of IBM Midrange server technology until the beginning of 1990. Since that
time I have been employed by a few of the third party vendors that have
offered twinax compatible peripherals. In my case, as time passed, I ended
up working for vendors that specialized in printing solutions tailored to
the IBM AS/400 and iSeries environments.
The change from twinax to TCP/IP connectivity that occurred on IBM
Midrange hosts in the late 1990's caused the business model of my employer to
change in that the focus of the organization was broadened from just IBM Midrange
hosts to pretty much any non-Windows or Novell host that created output to
be printed (The Enterprise Printing niche). As such, I began gaining
expertise in how Linux and Unix hosts handle printing as well as how more
specialized hosts such as HP 3000 and HP (formerly Dec) OpenVMS as well as
VAX systems handled printing tasks as well.
One of the things I noticed as I began gaining expertise in multiple host
server platforms was that the loyalty of the end user communities of these
platforms and the capabilities of certain other host servers mirrored in
many ways the IBM Midrange capabilities and host community loyalty quite
closely.
When you look at integrated host server platforms today (hardware and
software sold as a bundle), you will find the following:
HP (formerly Dec) VAX Servers - now dead. The operating system lives on as
OpenVMS.
HP 3000 - now dying. New purchases are ended in Oct. 2003 and end of life
is Dec. 31st, 2006.
IBM iSeries - still alive but sales and earnings are down dramatically.
What strikes me is that there must have been some significant market
forces at work in the early 1970's when all these systems (or earlier ancestors)
were developed that required a platform with extremely good reliability
and superior integrated database functionality. I am a little too young to
make any informed guesses about what these market forces might have been since
I was still in grade school and high school during much of the 1970's.
What I am wondering about today is whether new market forces are now at
work that are changing the requirements of computing so that an integrated
server such as the Dec VAX, HP 3000, or IBM iSeries are no longer required to
meet the demands of customers going forward (I don't claim to know the answer
at this moment).
I think the concern for many IBM Midrange server customers is that they
know about what happened to both the Dec VAX and HP 3000 systems. Prior to the
actual end of life announcements being made by these other vendors many of
the strategies currently being undertaken by the IBM iSeries management
were tried by these other vendors and were ultimately unsuccessful. Since very
little on our planet occurs in a vacuum, I believe I am seeing many
customers asking IBM to explain where they believe the computing
requirements of the world are headed and why an integrated server
(iSeries) is still needed in this new reality.
Recently I saw an e(logo) server interview with Bill Zeitler in which he
was asked whether the i and p series servers would merge in 2004 when AIX will
be able to run OS/400 in a partition. He said that wouldn't happen because
IBM needed an integrated server offering in its e(logo) server product
line. He did not explain why IBM thought this was necessary though.
My purpose for sending you this e-mail is to say that I personally think
the iSeries community places a great deal of trust in you. I also believe that
for the iSeries to remain a viable product for IBM in the next 5 years and
beyond, IBM will need to visit the deaths of some of the competitive
products and explain why IBM believes that the iSeries will remain useful
in the next 5 years while these other competitive products were retired. If
IBM were interested in creating a webinar or other type of promotional program
to talk about this issue, I think that you would be one of the best people
currently involved with the iSeries platform to lead such a program.
Ultimately I believe the continued success of the iSeries platform will be
driven by its relevance to the continuing business needs of IBM customers
and not by hardware performance gains or simplified software licensing.
I'm not sure whether anyone has looked at where the iSeries ancestors came
from to determine where the iSeries might be going so I thought it was worth
writing you this e-mail to pass along this insight.
Wishing you and IBM continued success with the e(logo) servers and
especially our buddy the iSeries,
/Paul
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