iSeries alternative includes flexible capacity

IBM touts future for platform offered to 3000 sites

Flexible capacity on demand. Lower entry-level prices. Eliminating interactive processing surcharges. Shrinking the cost of Web hosting and design. All these improvements, arriving for the iSeries servers this month, rank second to a single message for HP 3000 customers. The tune which IBM wants HP’s migrating sites to remember is “We’re still investing” in Big Blue’s integrated server line.

Cautions that surround a 3000 customer’s switch to another non-Unix, non-Windows environment often circle this worry: will every non-commodity computer follow the path of HP’s walk away from the 3000? Ian Jarman, IBM’s Product Manager for the iSeries (better known by its old AS/400 name), asserted that the vendor’s February rollouts prove the iSeries has more tomorrows than doubters predict.

“IBM is about investing in the iSeries,” Jarman said. “We’re making a fundamental transformation of the product to align it with the On Demand initiative in IBM. We’re the first server to announce new products after [our CEO] announced the initiative.”

HP-UX has long taken HP’s opening spot for its new initiatives, such as multiple-OS systems like Superdome. Jarman said that the iSeries line is introducing to IBM “what we consider to be the first true temporary capacity on demand.”

New midrange and higher iSeries systems will give customers a way to buy processing power by the day. Changes in software are also designed to address another problem — a large part of the iSeries application stable looks like it was written in the 1980s. To encourage software vendors to make things more modern-looking, IBM has pared down its powerful but complex WebSphere application server to a WebSphere-Express version. IBM hopes the move will give application providers an easier way to “WebFace” the sturdy applications that are harder to use than their Windows counterparts.

Vendors can eliminate the interactive pricing surcharge they’ve had to levy for applications by using IBM’s WebFacing Tool. For the first time, apps that have been WebFaced can run on a iSeries without any “5250 interactive” surcharges. Those extra fees could sometimes make up half of the cost of an iSeries purchase. The iSeries lineup used to have a complex set of interactive processing purchase points. Now there’s just one interactive point to purchase, part of a new Enterprise Edition of OS/400 with unlimited interactive power.

New lower end

The iSeries pricing has also been adjusted to match up better against Windows-grade acquisition costs. A new i800 server has a rock-bottom cost of $9,995, but appears to be designed with enough processing power to deploy WebFaced applications. Jarman said software vendors will use WebFacing because they “see a way to modernize and extend their applications, to target new markets like the HP 3000 community.”

The idea is to drive down iSeries acquisition cost by eliminating the 5250 interactive surcharges that many apps used to require. This deal is even better focused at HP 3000 users, because WebFacing without 5250 interactive is only offered on the new iSeries models. The iSeries installed base will have to trade up for new systems to escape their 5250 charges.

Such packaged software offerings represent one of the strongest advantages the iSeries brings to the 3000 community, a group whose packaged software selection has grown static. While in-house applications still drive the majority of 3000 installations, growth for the platform was tied to off-the-shelf apps. IBM likes to quote a figure of 20,000 applications for the iSeries. Some analysts say a big share of those apps haven’t been re-faced for Windows or the Web, which makes them look less effective to new sites.

App providers for every platform, including the HP 3000, need to compete on price more effectively against low-cost NT and Linux solutions. A Standard Edition of OS/400, coupled with the iSeries 800 or i810 servers for a total price under $20,000, could make the iSeries look more attractive compared to less-stable Windows applications.

WebSphere ascends

The iSeries adoption, with more than 500,000 servers working worldwide, was built on a formula the HP 3000 pioneered: integrating a database with every system installed. DB2 continues to do its work, and even has a free utility to convert Oracle databases to DB2. But IBM is looking beyond what’s succeeded yesterday, preparing for a more modern look by promoting WebSphere.

“We see WebSphere as being as significant to the future of the iSeries as the integration of the database has been to our success up to now,” Jarman said. The WebSphere-Express version includes Development Studio Client — an IDE to develop Java-based graphical interfaces — as well as a 1,000-employee phone directory application. For the first time WebSphere has been scaled to match the iSeries 800 and i810 entry-level systems’ performance.

IBM wants to reduce the cost of acquiring iSeries applications with WebSphere-Express. IBM used to charge $13,000 per processor for WebSphere, a cost that app providers had to roll into their offerings. WebSphere-Express is $2,000 per processor, or can be licensed by the seat at $25 per user.

Turning demand off, too

On Demand computing makes its debut at IBM with the new iSeries midrange and above. For example, the i825 servers ship with six processors, but IBM turns on only three at startup. Customers can then experiment with 14 bonus days’ worth of additional processing on the extra three processors, in order to get used to turning capacity off and on across peak parts of their business month. Then a customer can buy extra processor days incrementally, at a charge, for example, of $1,100 per processor day for the i825.

The increment of adding a second processor “is rather different for iSeries compared to other platforms,” Jarman added. The iSeries scales linearly, he said, delivering nearly all of processing power of each extra processor.

Analysis and incentives

Analyst Maria DeGiglio of the Robert Frances Group said the IBM rollout makes a fresh vow to a server lineup that may feel more like HP’s integrated 3000 systems.

“IBM is demonstrating a commitment to the iSeries with these announcements,” DeGiglio said. “There’s a great deal more technology to be un-harnessed in these boxes, and this is a huge client base for IBM. I see IBM remaining committed to these customers well into the future.”

Weeding the interactive charges down to a single price point, and boosting a no-5250 option, should help as well, she said. “Removing the interactive penalty is a huge consideration. They removed the software tiering penalty, so it’s easier for customers to plan ahead without concern of exceeding interactive [5250] needs.”

The analyst also pointed out that iSeries systems have the ability to run Linux or Windows apps, and Unix applications sometime next year. Although the systems can run those operating environments in addition to the OS/400 operating system, DeGiglio said the integration means iSeries users “don’t require the same need for operators and DBAs, and there’s a lower cost of ownership in running them.” She said that HP 3000 customers, “given their requirements, should seriously consider evaluating this box.”

IBM isn’t pushing trade-in credits as hard as HP’s offers to the HP 3000 community. For example, HP 3000s purchased this year qualify for 50 percent of their purchase price in credits toward HP’s Unix servers. But IBM has lowered its package cost from $50,000 to $25,000 to qualify for IBM financing.

Jarman said 80 percent of the iSeries base finances or leases through IBM. “For some of these small HP 3000 customers, that’s going to be a significant advantage,” Jarman said.