RE: IBM's Mainframe Makeover

There has been a bit of overt and back-handed publicity suggesting that IBM
still loves the iSeries and has big plans for its future.  None of it really
mentions the OS.  Reading between the lines IMO its more about consolidating
the hardware architecture than keeping the platform as we know it alive.

When we say that the AS/400 is going away we mean that we'll miss it's CL
command set, operating environment, database, and object architecture.  When
IBM talks about the future of the iSeries I don't get the feeling that much
of that environment will survive in the long haul.

If you preserve the AS/400 by making it into something completely different,
have you really preserved it?

I wonder if the S/390 has its own community of bigots out there shuddering
at the idea of a mainframe running Linux.

-Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike.Crump@saint-gobain.com [mailto:Mike.Crump@saint-gobain.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2002 9:08 AM
To: midrange-nontech@midrange.com
Subject: RE: IBM's Mainframe Makeover



Agreed.  Anyone remember those eServer infrastructure commercials?  "I'm
psyched, the boards psyched", "Cool is my daughter piercing her eyebrow",
etc.  At the end they referenced this infrastructure document that you
could get.  I knew it wasn't going to be much but I always like to read
what our executives might be seeing so I ordered one.

Not a bad document.  Definitely 50,000 ft executive view.  The one thing
that got me was the document had a sidebar section with the dictionary of
IBM operating systems.  Guess what?  No OS/400.  I wish I could find it.
I'm sure it listed AIX, z/OS, and even Linux.  But no OS/400.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.