IBM Corp comes away with a big new customer base for the AS/400 under its agreement with Wang Laboratories Inc, as the company made clear to its employees in an in-house television briefing after the announcement. IBM says that under the agreement, Wang is permitted to sell the AS/400 – which will bear the IBM logo only to customers that are replacing a Wang VS machine, and although if Wang’s decline had continued, IBM would likely have won many of those sites anyway, this way it gets them with no effort. That base adds up to 32,000 systems in 15,000 accounts. IBM also makes it clear that users converting to AS/400 – and a jointly operated conversion centre is to be established – will become IBM customers. IBM salespeople will also get commission on these AS/400 sales. Not so with regard to Wang sales of the RS/6000: Wang now plans to implement its Office 2000 software suite on the IBM Unix machines, and these will be sold with the Wang logo – as will the PS/2s it takes. IBM’s commitment to invest up to $75m more in Wang, which would give it 12% to 16% of the company’s Class B shares against the 3% to 4% it indirectly controls through its initial $25m investment, is dependent on the level of sales of IBM products Wang achieves, although how this is slewed is not made clear. And for the sake of other AS/400 resellers – and IBM’s sales force – that may be worried, IBM makes it clear that Wang’s AS/400 remit does not run beyond its own VS base – every sale must be a VS replacement or upgrade – and IBM stresses that where Wang decides to continue selling its VS machines, it will meet with fierce IBM competition. On the RS/6000, Wang can sell it to anyone it wants, but it can’t broke it. It is hinted that IBM may take some Wang software.
