With the new 9672 CMOS mainframes – yes, we know the number doesn’t sound like a mainframe but you remember it by thinking 9371 and doubling the second and last digits – the near-term outlook for IBM Corp must be better than for many years: with IBM acutely supply-constrained at the top end, mainframe prices are firming, and if you forget the parallel and server flackery and hype surrounding the new machines and simply regard them as straight upgrades for users still stuck on 9370s, 4381s and 3090s, of which there are still a lot, factor in the big cut in environmentals costs, they are extremely attractive, so that whatever horrors are buried in the personal computer, disk, AS/400 and Unix businesses, the mainframes should keep IBM out of the abyss for the next 18 months and there should be no surprise that the shares are hovering around the $70 mark and could well go higher; sad to say, though, the shares are still not for widows and orphans, a comment that would have sounded absurd even five years ago.
