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OS/400 Edition
Volume 12, Number 20 -- May 19, 2003

IBM Is Not Withdrawing SNA Software Support

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

There's been a persistent rumor going around the OS/400 world for the past few weeks that IBM will soon withdraw support for the Systems Network Architecture networking protocols and systems software, which have been woven into the OS/400 operating system since day one in June 1988. If you have heard this rumor, I can tell you it is not true. But that doesn't mean you don't have to deal with the issues surrounding SNA. You do.

The rumors I heard and tracked down to some of the initial sources were vague, but they all indicated that some people in high places had told OS/400 customers that it wouldn't be long before IBM withdrew support for SNA. Some of the hardware and software vendors in the iSeries market that sell SNA products had not heard this rumor, so I didn't lend it much credence at first, but I kept hearing it again and again. I contacted IBM's press relations people, and they sent back a terse statement that IBM would not be withdrawing support for SNA. I was fine with that, but then I kept hearing the rumors from other sources. So I contacted some sources in IBM's Rochester Labs who could settle the matter once and for all, and they said they would be happy to chase it down. They didn't call back. So I got a little worried, until I contacted Ian Jarman, product manager for the iSeries line. He put it to me simply and squarely: "There are no plans to withdraw SNA support on the iSeries." Jarman added that, for the most part, AS/400 and iSeries customers had made the transition to the more common TCP/IP networking protocols that are the backbone of the Internet and that were woven into OS/400 in the mid-1990s.

What may have sparked the rumors is the fact that IBM recently has been withdrawing networking and other hardware features that support SNA and has not been including SNA support in new hardware features (like Gigabit Ethernet cards) that might otherwise support SNA. The Virtual LAN capabilities in all OS/400 V5 machines, which allow the system backplane to be used as a very fast, virtual local area network to connect logical partitions, does not support SNA protocols and only supports TCP/IP links. The rumors may have been triggered by the opening paragraph in a statement IBM recently posted on its iSeries Web site. Here's the troubling excerpt:

The iSeries will focus on ensuring the proper instrumentation and infrastructures are in place to support the three-pillar strategy outlined previously. This base set of management capabilities extend the value proposition of the iSeries into the network. Included in this approach will be the continued focus to ensure that existing solutions and your investments in them are protected. Many of these existing solutions support an SNA connection protocol. We will continue to support these SNA-based solutions until such time that the core functions they provide are supported in the new infrastructure. However, as we enhance the OS/400, we will focus on delivering solutions based on the TCP/IP protocol.

That would raise a lot of eyebrows among OS/400 shops reading it, to be sure. But it should come as no surprise to anyone that SNA is not something that has a bright future of enhancements and that TCP/IP and other Internet protocols and technologies (such as grid protocols) are where OS/400 is headed.

IBM has long since stopped supporting SNA links between PC clients and AS/400 and iSeries servers using its Client Access connectivity software, mainly because TCP/IP is a much more streamlined protocol and allows Client Access to consume much fewer resources on a PC than SNA does.

While SNA is no longer a popular means of connecting OS/400 servers to clients or peripherals, the SNA Distribution Services (SNADS) program, which allows files to be passed between OS/400 machines in a manner that is as easy as the FTP protocol, but is a lot more secure than FTP, is widely used. Jarman concedes that IBM cannot just rip SNADS support out of OS/400, because customers use it. However, OS/400 shops do have some justification for their nervousness about SNA software. For instance, many OfficeVision/400 commands were used for more than a decade on OS/400 servers and were woven right into applications (particularly for the merging of database information into documents), and when IBM wanted to push its Lotus Domino alternative, it killed OfficeVision and made customers find third-party alternatives or port to Domino. The difference is that IBM doesn't have a product that the use of SNA is preventing from being sold into OS/300 shops, and that means the odds favor IBM just leaving it alone.

Some people in the industry contacted for this story felt that what IBM would eventually do is roll all of the SNA features into a separate set of programs and begin charging for it. IBM has done this with other communications software in the past--for instance, the TCP/IP Connectivity Utilities/400 (5722-TC1). Separating out SNA and rolling it into a separate product could happen, but there are no indications from IBM that this is in the works.

By the way, Jarman says that even companies that are heavy users of SNA protocols in their applications, particularly those who use the Advanced Peer to Peer Communications (APPC) protocol to allow RPG and COBOL applications to talk to each other across networks, can reroute over TCP/IP with a little help from Big Blue. Jarman says that a number of customers in the financial industry have been able to use Common Programming Interface for Communications, the programming interface for SNA, to get apps that used to talk over SNA to use TCP/IP. Exactly how this is done is IBM's secret. If you need help, call IBM.