InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

However, times have changed. Wintel systems are now the main competitors to the PowerPC-based AS/400. These systems promise users lower-cost commodity computing and easier administration, compared with Unix systems, and use Windows NT's graphical interface. Independent software vendors long ago opted for Windows, delivering new packaged applications for NT before porting them to the AS/400. The AS/400, which has traditionally sacrificed flexibility for hands-free administration, has had to open up its architecture to accommodate its NT rival.

In so doing, the AS/400 is winning back customers who had put new uniprocessor applications--such as Web front ends and office productivity software--on NT systems and relegated their AS/400s to being legacy servers. These users are gaining business advantages by running some of their NT apps on their existing AS/400s. For example, they're reducing their spiraling NT server populations and bringing AS/400 technology, such as capacity on demand, to their NT applications. After taking this fresh look at their AS/400 servers, some companies have even decided to scrap NT projects in favor of running comparable software for the AS/400's OS/400 operating system, citing renewed respect for the reliability, availability, and scalability (RAS) advantages of the AS/400 platform.

To gain NT compatibility, IBM developed an add-on card that lets users run NT software on AS/400 boxes. Called IPCS (Integrated PC Server) when it was launched in 1997, the card recently was rechristened the Integrated Netfinity Server, or INS. AS/400e systems, the latest iteration of the AS/400 series, can support anywhere from two to 16 INS cards, depending on the server model. The top-of-the-line AS/400e 720 supports 16 INS cards, each of which runs a different application. IBM says about 20% of AS/400 systems shipped last year had INS cards already installed.

The cookie manufacturing business of Nabisco Group Holdings Corp. in Parsippany, N.J., has been satisfied so far with the performance of the NT integration card it recently installed on one of its AS/400 production servers. For the last few months, 30 concurrent users at the company's Stella D'Oro cookie-manufacturing plant in the Bronx, N.Y., have been accessing Microsoft's office productivity suite off of the card. "We have all the NT functionality we need as if it's a separate server," says David Schmitz, a Nabisco systems developer in corporate IS. "To those users in the field, it's an NT server."

The company is also conducting additional tests of the AS/400's NT integration capabilities at its headquarters. According to David Calenda, Nabisco's IS manager for manufacturing and distribution systems, the company's policy is to evaluate every NT server at all of its cookie plants as it comes off its lease against an AS/400 system with an NT integration card to see which will offer the best combination of performance, capacity, and cost for particular tasks.

But IBM still has some kinks in its AS/400-NT integration strategy. The current version of the INS card supports a single 333-MHz Intel Pentium II CPU, 1 Gbyte of memory, and 128 Mbytes of direct-access storage. These specs lag far behind Intel technology. Indeed, the AS/400 division, which was responsible for building the cards, found it difficult to stay up to date with the integration product, because it was last to learn about enhancements from Intel or Microsoft.

IBM's Netfinity division, however, was at the front of that line and last year assumed responsibility for upgrades to the INS card. The result is that the AS/400 will support a more ambitious INS card. The card, due in the second half of 2000, will be more competitive with current Wintel technology. It will have one 700-MHz Pentium III processor and support for up to 4 Gbytes of memory and 1 terabyte of direct-access storage, according to sources. It will also be able to run Windows 2000.

IBM adds that future versions of the card will be available with the latest Intel chips (including the upcoming 64-bit Itanium CPU) and Microsoft operating system updates as soon as Netfinity servers ship with those features. That's good news, says Laurie McCabe, a senior analyst with Summit Strategies. "Now that INS is on the same development track as Netfinity, AS/400e customers can take advantage of the RAS and security of the server while running the latest Intel processors and NT operating system," she says. The vendor may also double the number of INS cards that fit into AS/400 systems by the end of this year or early 2001.

Still, there are no plans to deliver two-, four-, or eight-way INS cards so users can devote more than one CPU to each application they run. But some observers say users may be able to place some of the applications they would normally run across two-way NT systems on a uniprocessor INS card; the INS card itself supports no peripheral attachments, so the AS/400's own RISC processors already chip in to handle the load when it comes to printing NT files, allocating storage to NT applications, and other tasks.

INS cards are priced at $1,500 to $2,000, depending on the bus interface, plus $500 for 128 Mbytes of memory. The low-end NT servers with which they primarily compete typically run from $3,000 to $8,000.

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Illustration by August Stein
Photo of Calenda and Del Duca by Chriss Wade