By William Fellows

Although in step with IBM Corp’s drift towards usage-based mainframe software pricing versus dollars per MIPS, plug- compatible vendor Amdahl Corp says its experience is that users are interested primarily in adding more MIPS as prices continue to plummet. IBM’s usage-based pricing policies have not yet been fully implemented and as far as Amdahl is concerned they are not driving customers’ interest in new or additional mainframe. That’s the view of the company’s hardware people who say they can see no additional revenue opportunity from IBM’s plan.

Moreover Amdahl’s experience is also at odds with IBM’s mantra that e-business is driving mainframe sales. Amdahl’s mainframe people told us that it has no more than a couple of customers doing e-business on its mainframes and none using the kind of Java system software which IBM is touting heavily.

Fujitsu Ltd-owned Amdahl says Unix and Windows NT are driving e- business. It resells the Intel-based NT and Unix TeamServers developed by ICL Plc, another Fujitsu-owned company. It currently resells Sun Microsystems Inc Unix servers, the high-end UE10000 StarFire, being its key product. But it’s in a tricky situation now that parent Fujitsu has its own ambitious plans in the commercial Unix server market with the Sparc64-based GPS7000 servers, plus all the Siemens AG’s Unix server technology it has picked up with the acquisition of Siemens’ computer systems business. Sun and Fujitsu are partners on Sparc but Amdahl knows it is going to have to sell its parent’s servers. It’s currently working out how it can finesse the situation without offending Sun.

Amdahl believes that Fujitsu will begin to better leverage technology and marketing synergies across its Amdahl, Fujitsu Siemens and ICL units now it has set a target of becoming the world’s third largest IT supplier.

Meantime, after some well-publicized performance snafus on the mainframes Amdahl now claims that its high-end, 16-way Millennium 2000E will come in above the 2,000 MIPS performance it originally estimated the system would achieve when it hits the streets in the first quarter of next year. Amdahl has also begun to publish mainframe prices on its web site, showing list prices of around $2,600 per MIPS.

Having developed a connection to Linux from its LVS storage, the company is also working on a connection directly from its Millennium S/390 mainframes. In addition it says it will add support for Unix and NT systems to its Platinum 400 storage systems over Fibre Channel connections beginning next month.