[Fwd: AS/400 10 Year Anniversary] -- MIDRANGE-L

This came from IBM today via Email.  Preaching to the choir again.  Has
anyone seen any of this via the media????

Larry Bolhuis
Arbor Solutions, Inc.
lbolhui@ibm.net

Subject: AS/400 10 Year Anniversary
From: Diana Hugo <dhugo@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 10:19:36 -0400

THE CONTINUING EVOLUTION OF AS/400...

Throughout its first 10 years, AS/400 has evolved and reinvented
itself, helping customers take advantage of the latest computing
technologies, while continuing to provide reliability, ease-of-use and
investment protection.  Here are a few highlights spanning a
remarkable decade.

1988
 -AS/400 makes its worldwide debut.

1989
 -New high-end AS/400 B70 introduced.

1990
 -AS/400 C models announced (first to market with 3.5-inch DASD units).
 -AS/400 models C04 and C06 announced.
 -AS/Entry Y10 introduced for small businesses and new users.
 -IBM Rochester wins the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

1991
 -AS/400 D models announced, bringing up to 50 percent price/performance
  improvement.
 -Model D80 is the first N-way processor for AS/400.
 -OS/400 Version 2 Release 1 announced.

1992
 -OS/400 Version 2 Release 2 ships three months ahead of schedule.
 -AS/400 is first to market with RAID-5 storage technology for business
  computing.
 -IBM Rochester achieves ISO 9000 certification.
 -200,000th AS/400 installed at Heineken.

1993

 -VARBUSINESS readers vote AS/400 Product of the Year for the
  fourth consecutive year.
 -Corporate Computing names AS/400 a "best buy for 1993."
 -Datamation readers vote AS/400 Overall Product of the Year for 1992.
 -Client Series software transforms AS/400 into a powerful client/server
  system.
 -250,000th AS/400 installed at Coca-Cola.

1994
 -AS/400 Advanced Series announced.
 -The relational database integrated into OS/400 since 1988 becomes
  DB2/400, making it instantly the world's most widely-installed
  multi-user relational database.
 -AS/400 Advanced 36 -- the first system to include the 64-bit RISC chip
  -- is shipped.
 -OS/400 Version 3 Release 1, one of the largest releases of new
  software ever, greatly enhances AS/400's strength in client/server
  with new Client Access software, the PC co-processor (called the
  Integrated PC Server) and the Integrated File System, allowing
  multiple file types to be supported within AS/400.
 -TCP/IP performance greatly improved and POSIX enhancements made to
  OS/400.

1995
 -The 64-bit RISC-based AS/400 Advanced Series begins shipping.
 -AS/400 is the first system to offer a 64-bit RISC technology customers
  could use (Programs could be saved off previous CISC machines,
  restored on the RISC machines, and ran as fully 64-bit programs.
  No-one else could do that.)

1996
 -AS/400 Advanced Entry announced.
 -AS/400 provides e-business capability with its support of web-serving
  function.
 -Version 3 Release 2 and Version 3 Release 7 of OS/400 are certified
  year 2000-ready by the Information Technology Association of America;
  OS/400 is the first operating system to achieve this certification.

1997
 -AS/400e series announced; 12-way processors introduced on AS/400,
  making the new high-end system 4.6 times more powerful than the
  previous largest system.

1998
 -500,000th AS/400 installed.
 -OS/400 strengthens its e-business capabilities by providing support
  for 10,400 Domino users (the largest number of Domino users on a
  single system), Java enablement and Internet business transaction
  security.
------------------------------------------------
AS/400 FIRSTS

- AS/400 was the first system to market with 64-bit RISC technology
  customers could use.

  AS/400 is the only system that has 64-bit applications running on
  a 64-bit operating system that contains a 64-bit relational
  database that fully exploits 64-bit hardware.  No one else is
  64-bit from top to bottom.  Some competitors (e.g., Digital,
  Silicon Graphics) have -- long after 64-bit hardware was made
  available -- caught up with 64-bit operating systems.  Many firms
  talk about 64-bit hardware, but they're very quiet about the
  capability of their software to use that 64-bit hardware.  Only
  AS/400 was 64-bit from top to bottom on day one.

- AS/400 was the first system to ship memory card with 1MB with 4MB
  and with 16MB technology.

- AS/400 was the first system to deliver RAID-5 storage technology
  to the business environment.

- AS/400 was the first system to market with 3.5-inch DASD units.

- AS/400 was the first system to ship bi-polar CMOS technology.

- AS/400 was the first system to deliver Symmetric Multiprocessor
  technology to the business environment.

- OS/400 (Version 3 Release 2 and Version 3 Release 7) was the
  first operating system to be certified year 2000-ready by the
  Information Technology Association of America.
-------------------------------------------------------------
AS/400: 10 YEARS YOUNG

It began as a thousand-to-one shot, became an overnight sensation and,
10 years later, is still going strong.  It's IBM's AS/400, now heading
under a full head of steam into its second decade and, before long, a
new century.

For those who were instrumental in developing the system, all of this
is gratifying but not that much of a surprise, given the potential
there from the start.  "I remember telling our customer advisory
council that the AS/400's technology would never outgrow its ability
to meet their needs," recalled Tom Furey, who was director of the
Rochester systems development laboratory.  "That's how sure we were of
what we had achieved."

What had been achieved was a powerful new line of low-cost,
easy-to-use systems designed to fill the needs of small and
intermediate-sized businesses.  On June 21, 1988, six AS/400 models
made their debut, along with more than 8,000 applications written in
more than 20 languages.  There had never been a product announcement
like it in IBM history.

It was Furey who posed those thousand-to-one odds when he told an IBM
executive meeting in the autumn of 1986 what had to be done to make
AS/400 a reality.  "We decided not only to accommodate our installed
base of existing System/36 and 38 midrange systems," he said, "but to
offer advanced function and application support.  We had to merge
hardware and software without any prototyping.  We had to write
several million lines of software code.  Everything had to be executed
flawlessly."

"It was a very significant shake of the dice," said Steve Schwartz,
who was IBM vice president and general manager, Application Business
Systems, at announcement time.  "We were breaking so much new ground
-- in tools, techniques, business practices."  What kept shrinking
those long odds, he said, was the involvement, "from day one," of IBM
customers, suppliers and business partners.  "We shipped hundreds of
systems to customers for testing.  That helped us to discover a lot of
problems sooner than would be normal."

One subtle but substantial hurdle, added Mr. Schwartz, was keeping "the
IBM system" and the traditional round of reviews at bay so progress
would not become bogged down.

It wasn't until 30 days before the June announcement that the
Rochester team was sure of success, he recalls.  "That February we
still had a potful of problems.  Then in March, we started to turn the
corner."

Larry Osterwise, who was general manager of the Rochester site, shared
that down-to-the-wire feeling.  "I never felt we were over the hump
until announcement day," he said.  He recalls, in particular, a
last-minute problem with tape drives and the three-shift staffing
required for software testing.

"IBM had always taken from four and a half to five years to build a
major system," he pointed out.  "We were doing it in just over two
years."  What really set AS/400 apart from all those other systems, he
believes, was that it was "customer-driven, not technology-driven." By
the end of AS/400's first calendar year, he said, 12,000 applications
were ready for customer use.  "That was unheard of."

The people in manufacturing also had their work cut out for them.  As
manufacturing plant manager at Rochester, Raul Cosio had to ensure
that his location and the plants in Guadalajara, Mexico, and Santa
Palomba, Italy, would be ready to "ramp up" production and delivery
for anticipated customer demand.  One key challenge, he remembers, was
building into the manufacturing processes all of the last-minute
changes in product design.

Another challenge, said Mr. Cosio, was seeing to it that IBM suppliers
around the world were poised for action.  "We had to know that we
could get from them the best quality at the optimum cost -- and fast
enough to be responsive to customer demand."

A different perspective is offered by Robert Toatley, who is general
manager of Lawson Software's AS/400 business unit and was IBM branch
manager in Minneapolis in 1991, responsible for all IBM business
partners in Minnesota and Western Wisconsin.  Lawson Software was one
of the application software developers working closely with Rochester.
"When IBM was designing the AS/400," said Toatley, "they made a lot of
code available to software developers prior to general availability of
the product."

Mr. Toatley, who joined Lawson Software in 1997, cites AS/400's
affordability as a major reason for its instant acceptance.  "It had
the lowest ownership cost of any system in the industry," he said.
"That was important because a lot of clients then were more interested
in running their business than staffing up to support their
information systems environment."

Today, says Mr. Toatley, AS/400 is still a Lawson Software mainstay.
"We're having a lot of success with it.  We've done a lot of
benchmarks to illustrate to clients that AS/400 can accommodate as
large a workload as any system."

Ever since its introduction, AS/400 has continued to make its mark.
The system was instrumental in the Rochester site's winning the 1990
Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.  In 1993, Datamation readers
rated it the Overall Product of the Year.  This past January, IBM
announced that 500,000 AS/400s had been shipped since its
announcement.

Today a new generation of AS/400 systems and servers, backed by
thousands of Web applications, is meeting the e-business needs of
customers like Nabisco.  Dave Calenda, manager of plant infrastructure
for manufacturing distribution systems, was instrumental in Nabisco's
decision to deploy more than 17 of the new AS/400 models throughout
the United States in the next six to 12 months.  "Our current AS/400s
were exceeding capacity," he pointed out.  "With these new models, we
can handle lots of applications growth, as well as Year 2000
compliance, and take advantage of new technologies.  AS/400 is the
heart and soul of Nabisco's plant environment."

Nabisco, it should be mentioned, is one of the many charter AS/400
customers still turning to the system to satisfy their business needs.
Tom Furey, it would appear, got it right about a technology that would
never be outgrown.

Editor's note: Tom Furey is now general manager of worldwide Olympic
technology for IBM.  Raul Cosio is general manager of marketing and
distribution channels for IBM Latin America.  Steve Schwartz is
retired and living in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.  Larry Osterwise is
president and chief executive officer of Scangraphics.