The good news on IBM Corp’s ES/9000 Summit mainframes is that, as reported, they are about 16% faster than IBM initially said they would be; the bad news is that IBM is only cautiously optimistic that it will meet the target of first deliveries next month, and it appears that the company is severely supply-constrained on what appear to be its only mainframes for which there is serious demand – it says that anyone ordering now won’t get their machine before second quarter 1992. The company ascribed this to the normal ramp-up period for production of new computers but also, ominously, to the complexity of the new models.
