Circumscribed by the injunction – voiced or not, that the machines built around it should not pose a threat to IBM Corp’s proprietary product lines, the designers of the Power RISC created a chip that was heavily slewed towards scientific and technical applications – but the IBM world has changed out of all recognition since then and the RS/6000 is at least as widely-used in commercial applications as in technical, while IBM is finding it increasingly hard to sell proprietary systems. Accordingly, reports the January edition of our sister publication IBM System User, the company is planning to come out with parallel lines of RS/6000s, with the present models and their derivatives assuming a T for Technical subscript, while a new line, based on versions of the PowerPC, will carry a C for Commercial tag. The parallel lines will retain binary compatibility so that all applications written for either will run unchanged on the other, but the PowerPC is optimised for database and transaction applications. The commercial line will include large multiprocessor servers. Meantime IBM’s reaction to its failure to convert a large part of the System/36 base to AS/400 is still confused, but in the UK, it is negotiating for third party conversion tools designed to facilitate a migration of RPG II applications to Unix with a view to inviting users adamant that they don’t want to go to AS/400 to convert to RS/6000. Compared with making such users an offer they can’t refuse with a loss-leading configuration of the AS/400 with bundled System/36 co-processor, the strategy is a super high-risk one, because the conversion tools are available from a string of vendors, and System/36 users persuaded of the benefits of Unix would be stupid not to put the contract out to open tender, with IBM likely to lose a substantial proportion of the bids.
