After months if not years of negotiation, IBM Corp was scheduled to announce in New York yesterday that it has taken a 10% stake in Synon Inc, an AD/Cycle international alliance partner and supplier of the Synon II software engineering products for the AS/400. IBM is paying around $5m for the stake. IBM is also expected to announce today that 13 suppliers of software engineering and fourth generation language products for the AS/400 will be granted approved supplier status – an intermediate kite mark rank between AD/Alliance partnership and membership of the approved TVAP tool vendors partnership. The 13 suppliers will include all the major suppliers of development tools for the AS/400, among them System Software Associates Inc, supplier of AS/SET, and Cognos Inc, supplier of PowerHouse, both of which have been lobbying intensely for approved AD/Cycle status. IBM is expected to announce today as part of its slate of AS/400 announcements, that it is dropping development of the Cross System Product language for the AS/400. CSP is part of IBM’s Systems Application Architecture environment and was originally intended to be the preferred applications generator in IBM environments. IBM may also reveal why Intersolv Inc has dropped out of the AD/Cycle alliance. Word is that there is only one reason: IBM is backing AD/Cycle local network-based repositories, but will not back the one from Intersolv.
