The Four Hundred

IBM is trimming its catalog of iSeries processors and related features. On December 3, IBM will no longer make many Pulsar, I-Star, and S-Star models in the AS/400 and iSeries product line. IBM is selling four different generations of hardware right now, and each has dozens of processor features and hundreds of possible configurations when interactive features are thrown in. IBM needs to simplify and clear the sales channel, particularly if new iSeries machines using Power4 and Power4-II processors are coming in 2003.

As we reported a few weeks ago, the only thing that IBM will confirm about future iSeries hardware announcements is that the past is no indication of what it will do. Some sources say that OS/400 V5R3 is due in May or June of 2003, which is also when new entry Regatta-LE and midrange Regatta-M servers (as opposed to the Regatta-H frames, used in the iSeries Model 890) might be announced. Other sources say that new Power4-based machines are expected sometime in the third quarter. Still others say that there will be no new OS/400 release in 2003 and that the next OS/400 release will come in early 2004. I think it is most likely that IBM will announce new iSeries servers based on Power4 or Power4-II processors, and maybe even faster S-Star processors, sometime in 2003, running OS/400 V5R2, which just started shipping at the end of August.

As you can see from the summary table I have built, IBM has killed off a bunch of AS/400 machines using older Pulsar and I-Star processors. These machines were announced in the third quarter of 2000, just about two years ago. IBM is probably not even making these PowerPC processors anymore, so it is no surprise that IBM will kill them off in December. All of these machines have S-Star replacements. In some cases, the S-Star machines that IBM is pushing customers to buy cost less, but in some instances the machine IBM wants customers to buy, instead of this older gear, costs more. The newer machines are more modern and have more longevity, in terms of future OS/400 support, and they may offer better bang for the buck, too.

IBM has also killed off the 24-way Model 840-2461 in favor of a machine that uses Capacity Upgrade on Demand (CUoD), and it will also stop selling the SB2 and SB3 special-purpose application servers for three-tiered ERP applications. (IBM is telling customers to just buy zero-interactive Model 840s instead. Some earlier models of the "Bumblebee" Dedicated Servers for Domino will also be decommissioned in favor of more recent models using S-Star technology. Older memory cards for Model 7XX servers and various tape drives have also been removed in lieu of more modern memory cards and tape drives that are already available.

The table I built shows that IBM didn't kill off all the machines in this vintage of AS/400 servers. The Northstar-based Model 250, which uses a 200 MHz processor that is very long in the tooth, is still going to be available, as are the Model 270-2248 and the Model 820-2395, which use the 400 MHz Pulsar processor. IBM also has not removed from the catalog the Model 830-2400, a dual-processor machine that uses a 400 MHz I-Star chip. All of these machines date from October 2000 as well. These machines, for whatever reason, must have some appeal, or IBM would have killed them off. The Model 250 is the least-powerful machine that IBM sells, and the Model 270-2248 and Model 820-2395 are also not speed demons, and have low software group tiers. IBM may have a lot of these sitting in the barn and may be trying to get rid of them. The other machines that were removed may or may not be prevalent in the channel, but one thing is for sure: They won't be in the channel for very much longer.

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