The Four Hundred - More on IBM's iSeries Announcements

We told you last week about the new geared down iSeries Model 870 machine that IBM announced to fill a big performance gap between the Model 825 and the Model 870 in the revamped iSeries line. That wasn't all that IBM announced, however. There are lots of other things that will be of interest to OS/400 shops, plus IBM previewed two future iSeries servers that will make it less costly for OS/400 shops to do disaster recovery and high availability clustering.

IBM didn't give a lot of detail on the two future iSeries machines that it will announce, aimed at providing platforms for disaster recovery and high availability clustering, but Ian Jarman, iSeries product marketing manager in IBM's Enterprise Systems Group, said that the future machines are being described in what IBM calls a product preview, which means that the machines will be announced within the next six months.

The iSeries for Capacity BackUp will be an iSeries Model 825, 870, or 890 server configured with the minimum number of processors activated (that's 3, 5, 8, 16, or 24 base processors, depending on the machine). The Capacity BackUp machine will be stored offsite, and in the event of a natural disaster--tornado, fire, flood, what have you--customers will be able to activate more processors (up to 6, 8, 16, 24, or 32, again depending on the machine) to run their applications on because their production machine is wiped out. Customers will be allowed to replicate data to this backup iSeries machine, but it is not intended to be used for any purpose other than recovering from a disaster. That means companies will not be permitted to use it for data warehousing or for doing tape archives of production information. It is only a hot spare. IBM has not yet provided pricing or configuration information on this machine, but clearly it will be available with either OS/400 Standard Edition or OS/400 Enterprise Edition, since companies use both versions in production. While Jarman didn't give out pricing information on the iSeries for Capacity BackUp server, he did say that companies will be able activate capacity on the backup machine for testing purposes without charge. Exactly what IBM will charge for activation is unclear. IBM could sell the box with a low price and just restrict use, or it could charge a single, low price for the base box, then per-day usage fees for when it is activated during a disaster.

The iSeries for High Availability will similarly be based on the iSeries Model 825, 870, and 890 servers. The purpose of this specialized version of these machines is to provide a mirror copy of a production machine. If the iSeries Capacity BackUp machine is aimed at protecting against natural disasters, the high availability box aims to protect against outages related to planned downtime (during upgrades and data archiving, for instance) and for unplanned outages (usually caused by software crashes or human error). The iSeries for High Availability machine will come with OS/400 Enterprise Edition and will be a full capability iSeries machine. Companies will be able to use it for jobs other than failover clustering, which means both machines can be doing useful work. The iSeries for High Availability will have different terms and conditions from a regular iSeries machine, says Jarman, and it is reasonable to guess that these machines will have prices that are somewhere between the cost of a Model 825, 870, or 890 running OS/400 Standard Edition and the same machines running OS/400 Enterprise Edition. These machines will essentially productize the various discounts IBM has been given to customers who buy high availability clustering software from DataMirror, Lakeview Technology, and Vision Solutions. The question remains: Will IBM invite iTera and Maximum Availability to the party? The big three high availability vendors, which have driven a large portion of IBM's AS/400 and iSeries sales in the past decade, have a vested interest in trying to convince IBM to keep iTera and Maximum Availability off this box. It will be interesting to see what IBM will do. Kevin Patterson, a sales executive for iSeries Global Large Accounts in the Americas region, participated in a Webinar hosted by Maximum Availability describing the new high availability machines, but did not explicitly say that any particular high availability software vendor would be included or excluded from these boxes.

IBM also made a statement of direction last week, saying that it would bring its WebSphere Portal Express Version 5 and WebSphere Portal Express Plus Version 5 software to the OS/400 platform and run it natively on the box. The code, according to IBM sources, will be truly native, not an AIX version of the program running in OS/400's PASE AIX runtime environment or a Linux version running within Linux-based logical partitions on an iSeries box. IBM expects to roll this WebSphere Portal Express, which provides the base Web portal functionality, and WebSphere Portal Express Plus, which adds collaboration features to the portal, out within the next six months.

Jarman says that, thus far, 79 percent of the Model 810 machines that IBM has shipped have been equipped by customer request with WebSphere Express, the cut down, low-priced version of the WebSphere middleware that IBM is offering on OS/400, Windows, Linux, and Unix platforms. WebSphere Express is aimed precisely at the kind of midrange customers who buy Model 810 servers. Model 800 machines are generally acquired by customers who are less interested in WebSphere (at least so far), and customers acquiring bigger Model 825, 870, or 890 servers are generally more inclined to go for the full WebSphere Application Server Version 5 software because of the complexity of their Web applications, which often include Enterprise JavaBeans. (EJBs are not supported on WebSphere Express, but Java servlets are.)

Pricing for the native WebSphere Portal Express Version 5 and WebSphere Portal Express Plus Version 5 software was not announced, but if IBM is smart, the pricing will be consistent with what it charges for other platforms, so OS/400 shops are more inclined to keep it on their iSeries boxes rather than offloading it to other platforms.

In another interesting statistic, Jarman said that OS/400 Enterprise Edition is being adopted by between 80 and 90 percent of customers acquiring new iSeries machines, depending on the model number. He also said that 95 percent of the machines sold in the second quarter were for the revamped iSeries line announced in late January. Very few first-generation iSeries or older AS/400 models are being sold by IBM or its reseller channel.

These sales statistics for OS/400 Enterprise Edition do not include sales of the AS/400 Model 250 server, which is based on the old Northstar PowerPC processors, and which is still sold by IBM and its resellers. This box, which is a renamed and repackaged Model 170 machine, is not particularly useful for running modern workloads, but is still popular among many small companies that have green-screen workloads with modest processing, memory, and disk capacity needs.

Incidentally, while IBM is withdrawing upgrades from Model 7XX Northstar AS/400 servers to modern iSeries 8XX servers as of October 8, the company has no plans, as of yet, to withdraw the Model 250 from marketing. While companies are adopting the entry Model 800 machine, which offers excellent price/performance compared with the Model 250, many use Model 250s in branch offices and are not inclined to mix Model 250s and Model 800s at their sites, because they like to standardize on one box.

Just a reminder: Customers wanting to acquire first-generation iSeries Model 270, 820, 830, or 840 servers have only until November 21 to do so. After that, IBM will stop selling them, and it is only promising to sell them as refurbished machines with a warranty until that time. IBM also says that it will withdraw its 18 GB disk drives for the iSeries in March 2004.

IBM said further that OS/400 V5R1 will be sold only until November 21, 2003. But support will continue for quite some time. IBM began telling customers last week about its extended support for OS/400 Version 5 releases, something it was hinting it might deliver last fall. The company has extended the support date for OS/400 V5R1 by a minimum of one year, to May 5, 2004, and the end-of-support date will be announced at least 12 months beforehand. OS/400 V5R2 was due to have support cut off just after OS/400 V5R3 was announced with the 64-way "Squadron" Power5 servers. Those Squadron servers will require OS/400 V5R3, and OS/400 V5R2 was expected to have its support end on September 30, 2004. Now OS/400 V5R2 will be supported at least until September 30, 2005, but the actual support end date also will be announced at least 12 months prior. With the new open-ended support, IBM can respond better to its customers' need to keep older releases supported. In the past, IBM has used the lack of OS/400 support to try to get people to move to new iron, but this tactic is driving applications that might otherwise be on an iSeries to other platforms that have similar functionality to the most current OS/400 releases. Moreover, a 12-to-18-month announcement schedule was more than most customers wanted to cope with. Once they get their machines installed and working, they are loathe to mess with them. With this extended support, IBM can sell customers upgrades on their old iron without forcing a simultaneous upgrade to new iron and new OS/400 releases for customers who just need to add processing capacity and couldn't care less about new operating system features.

IBM made two important announcements regarding services for the iSeries line last week.

First, all new iSeries Model 825s that IBM sells from here on out come with free installation services from IBM's services organization. This free installation is available on all Model 825s that have not been installed as of July 22. This service is akin to that which IBM provides to customers who upgrade from prior AS/400 and iSeries machines for free as part of an upgrade. IBM is probably worried that customers are making big jumps from Version 4 to Version 5 software, and from older AS/400 machines to the latest iSeries machines, and such a jump is very complex. If customers have trouble, they are not going to blame themselves; they are going to blame IBM. IBM does not want to get a black eye if something goes wrong; hence it is offering free installation services for Model 825 buyers. This is a good example of proactively protecting customers, and IBM is to be commended for this.

The other interesting change in services is that IBM has introduced a new, low-cost 24/7 option for Software Maintenance on the new iSeries line for what IBM calls "severity 1" issues. This option is only available in the United States right now, but, Jarman says, there are other ways to get the upgraded Software Maintenance services in other geographical areas (though probably not at the low prices IBM is offering in the United States). In case you aren't hip to the new iSeries line yet, Software Maintenance is the old Software Subscription (the update service for OS/400 software) and SupportLine tech-support services rolled into one service, and IBM requires that every new iSeries have a one-year Software Maintenance contract. Software Maintenance costs from $1,200 on an iSeries server in the P05 software tier to $55,690 in a P50 tier. These are annual fees. Paying for a one-year contract for Software Maintenance gives customers 9-to-5 coverage for severity 1 issues. The cost of upgrading from 9-to-5 to 24/7 severity 1 support ranges from $158 on a P05 machine to $4,262 on a P50 machine. Speaking from experience, 24/7 support is money well spent, and the extra 6 to 13 percent that IBM is charging for the broader coverage is a very modest fee.