IBM has managed to launch the AS/400 as its great Systems Application Architecture machine without introducing a single SAA function onto it. Nor, with its data-set-oriented architecture, which is hopeless for character-based applications, will it ever knock the DEC VAX off the top office mini spot. So believes the outspoken Professor Martin Healey, currently chairman of Technology Concepts Ltd, at a recent International Business Communications-sponsored conference entitled Digital versus IBM. Professor Healey argued that the AS/400 was born when IBM realised that its first attempt to boost mid-range sales with the 9370 was abortive. Convinced that the 9370 would generate around 20,000 sales within its first year, the company had set its sights on a 50:50 split between mainframe replacement and new, minicomputer business. In reality, said Healey, the 9370 managed to meet targets on the first count, but has proved a total disaster on the second. Not so the AS/400, where IBM now claims a worldwide shipment figure of 25,000 and says that to date, sales to new customers represent around 30% of total AS/400 business. Until it supports OS/2 machines as terminals, however, Healey argues that the AS/400 is little more than a System/38 with good communications. Chief of these, alongside TCP/IP and LU6.2 protocols is LEN Low Entry Networking, an advanced form of SNA which uses the AS/400 as a network node, and is endorsed by Healey as a serious DECNet competitor. Long-term he believes that the AS/400 is best cut out to play the role of database server to a PS/2 workstation, using the SQL Structured Query Language as an access method. In the meantime, the AS/400 is good enough to stop DEC making new inroads into IBM sites, but not good enough to do the reverse.
