The AS/400: the platform

The AS/400 product line has been maligned for poor product management by IBM.  A simple test involves nothing more than asking yourself, “Have I ever seen an AS/400 commercial?”  If you read the WSJ, you may have stumbled across one or two (over 15 years).

 However, IBM’s “VIP” (vertical industry program) is an attempt to reengage application-directed marketing (sell the application first and the hardware will sell itself) and to get IBM’ers back into direct selling.  Yes, it’s true: IBM’ers used to sell applications!  The bottom line is that the program is pretty good if you’re able to deal with the IBM bureaucracy (which really isn’t that bad; it’s just a lot of administration).  I applaud IBM for [at long last] listening to AS/400 software vendors.

These days, the AS/400 hardware is great and competitively priced.  IBM is moving in the right direction for recapturing the SMB market, the market, in case you’ve forgotten, that IBM invented in the late 70’s and early 80’s.  But the BIG problem for the platform is IBM’s WebSphere/Java solution and IBM’s failure to provide a satisfactory conversion path for green-screen customers.  WebSphere is hugely expensive when deployed in a production environment: it takes a lot of middleware and a lot of hardware to drive a WebSphere enterprise system.  And the lack of training and qualified human resources is problematic when compared to what’s available for ASP.NET: the ASP.NET ecosystem includes msdn.Microsoft.com, www.CodePlex.com, www.asp.net, extensive vocational and 3rd-party education programs, and a comprehensive certification program.

IBM is a hardware company that buys software companies: IBM is not a software company; it’s a hardware company forced into software.  I think it’s clear IBM is working hard to get out of the software business (except for MVS, which is hugely expensive and therefore very profitable), and i5/OS, as good as it is, will eventually be an option on a pSeries box.  The net result of these forces is that IBM is pushing the AS/400 out of business (many customers will go to a packaged Windows application rather than rewrite to WebSphere/Java), and that will result in reduced hardware sales.  But there’s a solution.

If IBM wants to sell some hardware, they’d release a 64-bit Wintel (let’s call it the “wSeries”) platform based on current hardware technology and support for Windows Server, IIS, Exchange Server, SQL Server 2005, and the rest of the Microsoft product stack. 

It’s probably sitting on a shelf somewhere in Rochester.  Anybody remember the closing scene in “Raiders of The Lost Ark”?