IBM Corp yesterday made what was ostensibly an Internet announcement, but included a new RS/6000 and a new AS/400 Advanced 36. It also announced the OS/390 operating system bundle, which it says can save users money by offering a discount for buying the whole package as opposed each element individually. The idea of the Internet software for mainframes, AS/400s and RS/6000s is to make it easier for users to make the contents of their existing databases accessible at Web sites. The new RS/6000 Model 30F can be bundled with Internet server code from either IBM or Netscape Communications Corp, plus DB2 and CICS mainframe World Wide Web gateways under AIX. The machine is also the first RS/6000 to be offered with Windows NT as well as AIX. The OS/390 bundle now comes with a suite of Web software, and OS/400 is being extended with a new Internet Connection for AS/400 browser that will not be available until the second half. The new AS/400 Advanced 36 is the Model 436 – actually three models, the smallest of which only matches the existing one. They are claimed to be two to six times faster in interactive response times, four to 30 times faster in batch compared with the biggest old-style 36, not the first Advanced 36. The IBM Personal Computer Co also added servers to run OS/2 Warp Server, Solaris x86 or Windows NT, and can be configured with IBM’s Interconnect Server or Netscape’s Secure Commerce Server.
