Servers: IBM’s iSeries

This week our Special Focus takes a look at one of the venerable servers in the industry: the IBM iSeries – more popularly known as the AS/400.

Introduced in 1988, the AS400 has gone through some amazing transformations. Today the box supports everything from Windows to open source to Web services. And IBM plans more additions. According to our author (jmears@nww.com) Big Blue plans to invest more than $5 million during the next two years in its iSeries line, aiming to increase the flexibility of the box to ensure it remains a key part of the changing IT landscape.

For example, IBM says to expect the servers to support AIX, IBM’s version of Unix, in 2004. That’s in addition to support already available for Linux, Windows and, of course, OS/400. Other enhancements planned for 2004 include an upgrade to IBM’s 64-bit Power 5 processor and a new 64-way system. The iSeries offers one to 32 processors today.

As far as software goes, look for continuing independent software vendor support for the iSeries platform, which currently runs more than 20,000 offerings from more than 4,500 software companies. In the past year, for example, the number of Linux applications for the iSeries has grown from “only a handful” in to hundreds “with more coming every month,” IBM says.

The box has proved a valuable component to user networks as well as an important cog in the Big Blue machine. For more on this story see: https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0112specialfocus.html