It doesn’t sound very good news for IBM UK, which by all accounts had a rotten year with the AS/400 last year, but the System 36 resale market is active and set to remain buoyant through to mid-1992, according to a report by ASNA Ltd, a Guildford, Surrey-based systems software specialist. The company says it interviewed a number of mid-range brokers and the consensus is that the second-user market is slowing down because of the recession, but its is expected to be stable for at least 18 months, some say much longer. ASNA estimates that fewer than 20% of System 36 sites have migrated to the AS/400, primarily because IBM has not provided an obvious software upgrade path: even if IBM reckons that it has now done all it can possibly do to make the upgrade painless, price is also an issue. If IBM introduces certain software enhancements this year, as anticipated, System 36 users may migrate in greater numbers. ASNA suggests that the AS/400 is mirroring the acceptance path of the System 38, only picking up after 18 months of sluggish sales. Some users are upgrading System 36 hardware and software to postpone investment in more expensive equipment, and despite being promoted as the natural successor to System 36, the AS/400 is having to compete with the VAX and Unix-based systems. Many second-user System 36s are being recycled for upgrade parts, and useful life of older machines is being extended by updating data management systems and using structured programming capabilities. ASNA says it is unclear whether the RS/6000 has had a significant impact on the mid-range market. It is rarely seen by brokers in mid-range bids, and given IBM’s late entry into the Unix market, many users have aleady committed to other vendors. The highest concentration of installed System 36s is in the US, somewhere between 80,000 and 90,000 systems. In Europe, ASNA estimates that Italy has 27,000 systems, France has between 17,000 and 18,000, in Germany it is between 13,000 and 14,000, between 7,000 and 8,000 in the UK – as well as competing with all the same competitors as in the US, in Europe, the machine has had to compete with offerings from local champions like ICL, Bull and Nixdorf. Eastern Europe is regarded as the next potential second-user System 36 market.
