IBM rebrands to boost 3000 alternative

iSeries becomes eServer i5, adds Unix app capability

IBM has made changes to its small and medium-business HP 3000 alternative that gives the computer a broader set of skills. The changes to the iSeries are like learning that Cary Grant had learned do calculations to prove quantum physics. The trouble might lie in how much of the new math the long-performing platform will need to do to keep a leading role.

The iSeries has been IBM’s Cary, elegant and long-playing and utterly unique. The server that grew up out of the System 36 roots has been made over several times, most recently as a multiple-operating system platform. Customers who love it, and still call it an AS400, gathered in San Antonio at their latest user group show to hear why the iSeries has changed so much that IBM now calls their computer by a new name.

The computer’s two latest models will be known as the eServer i5, in part to tout the latest IBM technology at the system’s heart. IBM is still in the chip business, developing processors just as Intel and AMD do. The POWER5 CPU technology is being used first in the iSeries, to the community’s delight. It’s as if HP would have shipped the first Itanium systems with HP 3000 badges on their front.

The word badge is important in the IBM announcement, however, because the hardware at the i5’s heart is a server capable of running many operating systems. In a short time, the IBM pSeries systems, built for Unix, will also have POWER5 engineering. All signs point to the demise of the Series names for IBM’s servers, as the company gives the eServer the ability to run Windows, Linux, IBM’s AIX Unix, or the OS400 operating system.

The mixture of the latter two environments recalls a similar project in HP’s own labs, nearly a decade ago. The Multiple Operating System Technology (MOST) was to give HP 3000s a way to boot up with MPE, but run HP-UX programs. MOST was supposed to make customers more comfortable with buying HP 3000s. Conversions wouldn’t be required.

HP cancelled MOST before it was completed, and kept its servers on separate operating environment paths until Superdome. MPE/iX was not invited to play on Superdome. IBM looks to have sent its AS400-iSeries a full invitation to play on the future of the Big Blue servers. The company made a point of getting the latest technology in the hands of its most loyal customers, according to iSeries General Manager Al Zollar. But Zollar said the message to the AS400 loyalist also has an echo for the HP 3000 customer.

“The real message to the e3000 base is that is a very stark contrast to what HP has done. HP has said that in order to get to 64 bits, you have to change a lot of things. We’ve said that this is just another binary-compatible upgrade.”

In addition to the POWER5 technology, IBM also rolled out its Virtualization Engine first on the i5 eServers. Virtualization is a popular technology among the leading server vendors, and IBM’s implementation delivers some new functionality that looks like it leapfrogs HP’s offerings. The Virtualization Engine

can now manage logical partitions (LPARs) dynamically, and the partitions can run Windows, OS/400, AIX, or Linux. (In its POWER5 rollout, IBM has renamed OS/400 as i5OS V5R3.)

HP told 3000 customers at the Solutions Symposiums that the HP LPAR technology was more dynamic than IBM’s. But the Virtualization Engine can dynamically resize the LPARs by detecting increased workloads. As a partition approaches 100 percent utilization, the Engine takes unused capacity from the server and automatically adds it to the stressed LPAR.

If the Virtualization Engine makes the blending of iSeries and Unix environments automatic and easier, the blending of 3000 customers’ applications with the i5 platform is still going to look like a migration. Zollar admits as much, but said that when a 3000 site does a migration onto the iSeries, the customer buys into a promise of increased R&D for a stable, 3000-like server.

“We’re going to be spending half a billion dollars in investment over the next two years on this platform,” Zollar said. “The 3000 customer will enjoy the same benefits as the iSeries installed base once they get onto the platform.” The Virtualization Engine technology arrived on the i5 for less cost, in part because of its heritage and implementation. The technology was leveraged out of IBM’s mainframe labs, and IBM installed virtualization directly on the POWER5 chips, instead of reworking the OS400 operating environment to accept the multiple-OS feature.

Leading with Unix and Linux?

IBM revised the base hardware price structure for the i5 rollout, giving the models the same component and CPU pricing as pSeries and xSeries models in the eServer line. In effect it makes these newest iSeries systems as versatile as a movie star who can moonlight as a math professor. But signs point to the i5’s growth requiring that the boxes do the math, rather than smile gracefully for the cameras, to earn their keep.

New applications are arriving for the Unix and Linux environments on the eServer line, rather than the OS400 roots of the iSeries. Acucorp, which makes a COBOL development suite for the HP 3000 but sells far more products for Unix, Linux and Windows platforms, started supporting the iSeries two years ago. Its iSeries products don’t run under OS400, but on Linux, which is also being supported on the new i5 eServers.

IBM believes that the growth of applications on non-OS400 environments is a good thing for iSeries customers, who also do a lot of computing on Windows and Unix. The i5 becomes a box for consolidation in IBM’s strategy. “Customers have this incredible pain in the other parts of their infrastructure,” Zollar said, pain that the latest generation of iSeries is ready to relieve. “It’s a huge untapped market, probably as big as the market of e3000 users.”

iSeries veterans rolled their eyes at IBM’s rebranding of their server and its operating system, but those at the COMMON conference could see how a new brand could attract new customers. Even in a marketplace more than 400,000 servers strong, growth remains a concern. Zollar said that one customer at the conference said he was going to continue to call the computer an AS400. “I told him I don’t care what you call it, so long as you keep buying it,” Zollar said. Now that the vendor has opened the gates of an iSeries system to Unix applications, the market can decide what role its veteran star will play.