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Server platforms Toolkit

iSeries overhaul looks to the long term

Stephen Shankland CNET News.com

Published: 09 Aug 2004 15:15 BST

It's been a pattern for years in the server market: a powerful new machine arrives, grows popular, then fades into history as the industry moves to fresh designs. Loyalists are left in the lurch.

The OpenVMS machines led Digital Equipment Corp. to glory, but their current owner, Hewlett-Packard, rarely even mentions them anymore. Prime and Data General expired altogether. The once-diverse mainframe gene pool has dwindled almost to one lineage.

IBM's iSeries could be one of those endangered species: it has used processors and software far from the mainstream. But Big Blue thinks it has found a way to keep the server line relevant.

The newest breed of iSeries comes with hardware and software changes that bring a speed boost and price cut. And it brings the servers fully into a technology line IBM has pledged to develop for years to come. The iSeries servers now use the same hardware as the more widely installed pSeries family. Also, the system has been able to run Linux since 2001, and now can run the AIX version of Unix from pSeries. Even specially designed Windows servers can fit under its wing.

The changes should assure survival, but they don't necessarily mean the line will attract new customers. For the long term, iSeries seems to be evolving into a different product entirely. But in the short term, customers are pleased.

Nigel Fortlage, vice president of information technology at GH Young International, is a typical iSeries customer -- he works at a medium-size business that prefers pre-assembled packages of hardware and software. He has been buying the systems for years, and says a single iSeries server can take on the work of many less powerful servers. He recently bought a server that is running four different operating systems.

"We have 14 servers under this one machine," Fortlage said. And, because the company opted not to buy separate servers based on Intel processors, it didn't have to hire new system administrators.