Book Excerpt: The All-Everything Machine

by Brian Kelly

There is no better kept secret in the computer industry than the new eServer i5 from IBM. Another secret of which most modern computerists are unaware is that IBM makes the finest, most architecturally elegant, most usable, most productive, and most affordable computer system of all time. That system is the iSeries i5, the all-everything machine, and though its birth was on May 4, 2004, its advanced underpinnings go back well over 30 years. That's an awful long time for any company to keep such a secret, but my speculation is that today's IBM is getting ready to change all that.

Not only has IBM kept the secret, but with the all-everything machine, it has kept the lead. That is noteworthy but not quite as noteworthy as the fact that the machine architecture that was conceived and delivered 30 years ago is still the best that anybody has ever built. Using a 30-year-old "nobody else can afford to build one" architecture, IBM continues its technology lead by far compared with all the other machines of today, including the mainframe.

One would have to conclude that IBM is 30 years ahead of its competition and that's before you factor in that during the 30 years since its conception, IBM has not stood still. Each and every year, more and more capability and facility has been built into the all-everything machine. Now, I am not suggesting that the i5 all-everything machine is 60 years ahead of the competition, but that is where the math logically takes you.

If I had never worked with other computers--mainframes, 1130s, System/360 Model 20s, Unix boxes, PCs, and so forth--I probably would not have appreciated what a solid system the eServer i5 family has been right from the start. The Rochester, Minnesota-built small business computer line from which the i5 was spawned was unusually easy to work with. In every other early computer platform, there were cryptic codes to decipher and continual puzzles to solve just to get the machine turned on. Programming was and still largely is even worse.

Of them all, at least before I worked with Unix, I felt that the mainframe was the most cryptic of the cryptic. Technicians carried special green cards with codes and translations galore in order to program properly on a mainframe. At the time I learned it, I was convinced that the mainframe had been slapped together by bit-head engineers who expected just bit-head engineers to work with it. Real people need not apply. Even today, I have great respect for the technical acumen of the professionals who know the mainframe.

When IBM introduced the first ancestor of today's eServer i5 as the System/3 in 1969, it was remarkable. It was as if IBM had sent all the geeks home that day. There were no strange codes that were indecipherable. No IBM green "HEX" card was needed. Programming the System/3 was almost as easy as speaking in English. Maybe not that easy; but it was easy. IBM had succeeded in using high tech engineers to build a system for regular people. I don't know how they did it, but they did.

It was just a start, but it was a good start. From that moment on, the Rochester style of computing became contagious. Rochester wares were the most popular computers in small businesses for decades. Each and every Rochester computer was built on the principle of large system function with small business system ease of use. Each model was substantially better than the preceding machine and IBM business customers just gobbled them up and their businesses grew unimpeded by technology and reboots.

Today, the eServer i5 is positioned to be sold in small businesses, medium businesses and even up to the largest businesses in the world. As a family of computers, with various capacities and costs, the i5 handles workloads from the size of just bigger than Mom and Pop organizations to the Fortune 500. IBM has recently labeled its i5 a "mainframe for the masses" because it gets as big as a mainframe but it can be used effectively by a small business.

This book walks you through the story of the i5 from the very beginning until today. In addition to telling a powerful, compelling story, the book describes in layman's terms the technology and computer architecture innovations that are part of every i5. When you finish this book, you will understand why IBM is proud to have built the finest computer system in the world, and you may just find a place for a particular size one of these rascals in your own business.

For the most part, this book reads as a series of 20 essays. Each of 20 chapters is built as a short story unto itself, with the sum of the chapters telling the story of the all-everything machine. For the most part, you can pick up any chapter and read it without having to read a prior chapter. However, you may want to read the early chapters first to get a perspective on what the i5 computer is all about and its relevance in IBM history.

This book presents the IBM all-everything machine, its underlying superiority, its rapid customer acceptance, the IBM development history, and the IBM all-everything machine's probable future starting with the i5. This is not meant to be a technical book at a detailed level. It is written for those who have some or little technical background, who may know lots or nothing about an eServer i5 machine or its predecessors. However, there are a few chapters in which I do get just a little bit technical, hoping that I can show the reader in reasonably simple terms how the i5 is a special machine with a long and successful tradition.

When you finish reading this book, regardless of your technical competency, you will have a good idea of a number of unique computer science architectural attributes from which any computer system, from any vendor, can benefit. You will also understand how those attributes can help any company, such as yours, preserve its software investment and permit the upgrading of hardware and software without forcing a rewrite or a re-build, or a re-purchase. You will learn that not only has no other computer company, of software or hardware heritage, ever created a machine with all of these advanced architectural attributes, no computer company has yet to be able to adopt even one of these powerful notions into their computer servers of today.

This book is written, then, to teach you what is unique about an i5, and why the parts that are unique, are also good, not bad; and why you should demand these facilities in any machine you choose to use. I believe that the computer system (server) actually does make a difference in the overall value of IT to your business, and there is no system that has ever been made that delivers value better than the iSeries i5. In this book, you will learn why!

Note: You can order The All-Everything Machine through the IT Jungle Online Store at by clicking here. The book is on sale until the middle of April for $24.95, a 17 percent discount off list price.

Brian Kelly retired as a 30-year IBM Midrange SE in 1999, having cut his eye teeth in 1969 on the System/3 and later with CCP. While with IBM, he was also a Certified Instructor and a Mid-Atlantic Area Designated Specialist. Kelly takes pride in having announced the AS/400 at Marywood University in June, 1988. When IBM began to move its sales and support to Business Partners, he formed Kelly Consulting in 1992 as an IT education and consulting firm. Kelly developed numerous AS/400 professional courses over the years that range from soup to nuts. He has written dozens of books and numerous magazine articles and about current IT topics; he has also developed and taught a number of college courses and is currently an adjunct member of the graduate faculty at Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he also serves as iSeries technical advisor to the IT faculty.