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What's Wrong with AS/400?
Article ID: 65294
Posted July 8th, 2010
I'm annoyed. The name of our platform isn't iSeries, AS/400, or System i. The name of our operating system isn't OS/400 or i5/OS. And it's never been i/OS!
I think IBM's renaming of this platform was ill advised, and changing the name multiple times has led to mass frustration (as well as mass confusion). But at the same time, continuing to call it by the old names makes you look like an idiot. Sorry, but it does!
The Naming History
If you're still referring to the system by an old name, you're in good company. As I travel to user groups and conferences, I talk to a lot of people, and with the lone exception of Trevor Perry, everyone calls our system by an old name. Everyone. That includes most IBMers.
Here's a quick rundown of the names that our platform (hardware and software) have had over the years:
| Date | Hardware Name | OS Name | Years Active |
| Nov 1979 | IBM System/38 | CPF | 8.5 |
| Aug 1988 | IBM AS/400 | OS/400 | 11.5 |
| Dec 1995 | IBM AS/400 (RISC) | OS/400 | n/a |
| May 2000 | IBM eServer iSeries | OS/400 | 4 |
| June 2004 | IBM eServer iSeries | i5/OS | 1.5 |
| Mar 2006 | IBM System i5 | i5/OS | 2 |
| May 2008 | Power Systems | i | 2 ... so far |
Our system was called AS/400 for 12 years. It has now been 10 years since it was last called that—by now, surely the habit has been broken?
Indeed, it seems to be. I've spoken to many people at user groups, conferences and other events, and I've noticed this trend. Within the past two years, I've noticed that the vast majority has stopped calling the system "AS/400." The vast majority today seems to be calling it "iSeries."
What the heck? It hasn't been called iSeries in more than four years! That entire style of hardware (and make no mistakes, iSeries is hardware) is no longer made or supported. Why are people switching to the name iSeries?! I can only assume that they're confused.
The hardware we buy today is Power Systems. The operating system that we all know and love is called i. Yes, just the single letter i. It's not System i, i/OS, iOS, or iSeries. It's just the letter i. Since that letter is already a word and is nearly impossible to use in Google searches, many of us refer to it as IBM i. IBM i is perfectly valid as well, because IBM is the organization that owns i. Just as it's valid to say "Microsoft Windows 7" instead of just "Windows 7," it's valid to say "IBM i" instead of just "i."
That does not make it the same thing as iSeries!
The Vendors
So the average Joes out there still call it by an old name. I was talking to them informally, in an informal environment. They shouldn't be judged by that, should they? So, instead, let's look at the professional websites put out by the vendors. After all, their sites are their marketing, and surely they want to look professional! I'm sure they care about how things are phrased; they don't want to look like fools.
So I spent a few minutes just picking vendors' sites off the top of my head. I'm not going to name any names, but here's a quick list of phrasing I found:
- Software for AS/400 (sometimes called iSeries/400)
- Software for Windows 7 to connect to IBM AS/400 (System i, iSeries)
- IBM System i Modernization (this one really made me laugh)
- Business and systems solutions for IBM System i
- AS400, iSeries Software for the IBM Midrange eServer
- access to your System i (iSeries/AS400)
- solutions with AS/400 and iSeries compatibility
- System i Software
And even Wikipedia uses this phrase:
- It was renamed in 2006 as the IBM System i until April 2008 when it was replaced by the IBM Power Systems line. It uses an object-based operating system called IBM iOS.
In fairness, I did find one site (and only one in my random sampling) that had it spelled out properly:
- ...applications run on the IBM i platform - the most reliable, proven technology in the industry.
But out of the 10 sites I visited in my quick random sampling, only one actually knew the proper name of the platform? You can't be serious!
Let me comment on a few of the mistakes I found (as listed above). There has never been a system known as "iSeries/400." If you've updated to Windows 7 (released 2010), surely you've also upgraded to IBM i and aren't really limited to AS/400, iSeries, or System i? The system hasn't been called an eServer in four years! And the phrase "System i Modernization" made me laugh out loud . . . you want to modernize to a system that IBM no longer makes?
Yes, of course I knew what all of these people meant. But this sort of thing is very much like having bad grammar—you wouldn't want it to be published on your website. It looks unprofessional! You look a little bit foolish! It's been two years since the name changed. You've had time to have someone check it over and correct it.
What's Wrong with Us?
To be blunt, every time folks use an obsolete name in a formal, professional context, they look like a fool. Every time they use the name of the hardware when they want to talk about software, they look like an idiot. Like a grammar or spelling error on a sign, it shows a lack of care and a lack of professionalism.
Now, I must admit, I don't like the name "i." Not only is it a single letter (and therefore useless in a Google search), but it's a single letter that also happens to be a word in its own right. As a writer, I find it very difficult to use in a sentence. I think IBM's decision to change the name was a terrible decision that has done incalculable damage to the platform. Despite this opinion, I do try to use the right name. Since my articles are almost always about software, I refer to the "IBM i platform," or I refer to "systems running IBM i." It's a little awkward, but it seems to work.
So I sympathize with those of you using old names—but it's time to just get over it and move on! Use the right name! Especially on your websites, advertisements, résumés, deliverables, and other documents that should look professional.
What do you think? Leave your comment below.
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IBM could probably port KDE, Gnome or whatever to IBM i, but I'm not sure what the big gain would be. It's primarily a server OS. We already have graphical administration tools, and it is unlikely there will ever be a large market for a personal Power-IBM i desktop. In terms of GUI apps, all kinds of alternatives are available from browser-based apps (Java, .NET, PHP, Javascript, etc.) to fat-client apps developed in your language/framework of choice for your platform of choice. Granted you can't do it all in RPG, but it's hard to do anything easily in just one language.
Now that IBM i runs on generic hardware, so to speak, it and RPG will be around for a long time, even if only in a maintenance mode (i.e., no major enhancements beyond maintaining hardware compatibility or giving RPG minor enhancements), unless IBM, the Power Systems line and AIX go under, which is unlikely. IBM may be bad with marketing (IBM i), but they are very good with supporting their customers and installed base.
Scott Klement,
that's exactly my point concerning as/400.
Ibm was too late to modernize hardware to succesfully cope with modern 'eserver' workloads and they're even more too late to provide a native graphical interface embedded inside os/400 which we all know ain't going to happen ever.
Lately I was looking into Rdi 7.6 (the former WDSC, then renamed Rdi (rational developer for i) and now been given yet another name I don't recall. Guess what the newest functionality in 7.6 is: it now includes a fully operational, visual screen designer with all bells and whistles which allows you to create and edit ......thatha.....drumsroll.......... text based green screen DDS panels. Wow!
But for those thinking Ibm is stupid, they're not at all. From their perspective the merger of i+p is good for them and the customer and whenever there is a shift in the market place from "i" based systems to those god foresaken, damned, develish wintel or unix platforms, IBM is right there at your doorstep happily supplying you with "x"Series Wintel servers or as far unix/linux is concerned, systems "p".
Long live Ibm, right?
To tips@scottkleme... :
Scott Klement,
no what I mean with underpowered or overpriced is something completely different with what you understood. Let me explain.
When I was working back in 2000 for a local As/400 ISV serving SMB customers in different segments of the industry, they were exited Ibm opened up their proprietary machine to allow modern TCP protocols, tcp/ip host servers, java (remember ibm's burger flipping campaign) because these new kind of workloads were expected to increase business.
So they tested host transformation, coded in java only to notice a 2000 line java program took more than 5 minutes to compile in Qshell, they fired up the http server, only to notice the consulation of pictures and audio streams took forever, while contemporary wintel (IBM XSERIES!!) servers running windows 2000, responded in seconds. So management got a little anxious to know why the as/400 wall sized beast (back then, it was a model 7xx as far I recall) couldn't compete with a wintel server the size of small fridge. So the ISV asked a rpg developer and a windows developer to organize a little contest. The question: write a little program in the language of your choice which does a few computations on variables and wrapped it up in a loop to run for a measureable time (few minutes). So they both quickly wrote a 50 line program, and let it run. The results were devastating for as/400. Then they asked the programmers to test memory speed (allocate a 512mb piece of memory and traverse it) and disk access (allocate a 10gb disk file and test disk access with random generated sector numbers), another tiny 50 line program. Results were again bad for as/400, although the test were not statistically of scientific thorough.
Nevertheless the underpowerment back than in 2000-2005 is why the majority of shops even at this very day are reluctant to use 'modern tools' like as/400 based http server (apache, ibm dropped it's own), dns service, active directory (oops, doesn't exist on 400) or are reluctant to use embedded sql since record based i/o (chain) is supposedly that much quicker or java (alas, only if you *must*).
What I'm trying to tell is ISV's at the time got very dissapointed with performance of 'modern' workloads and IBM didn't respond quickly enough. Ibm did respond with a model 515 having 3000CPW back in 2007, plenty of power, but by then, most ISV's already left the field. The remaining ones only provide maintenance but don't foresee notable upgrades, with an exception maybe of J.D.Edwards, now under Oracle's wings (oops).
The loss of the ISV's means no more new wins for the as/400 platform; if there are any, it would probably be in merger/joint venture situation where the larger partner forces the smaller partner to connect to the as/400 platform, but I witnessed cases where the reverse happened and a larger partner saw a chance to modernize and take over that shiny Windows Navision ERP sofware from it's smaller partner.
To make a long story short, in my opinion the underpowerment of as/400 for modern 'eserver' workloads back in the 1998-2005 period and the too late answer of ibm, has caused the loss of many ISV's and therefore shuts the door to expansion of the as/400 market. At best it now remains stagnant, but it isn't. My quess is about 2 % of shops are at this very moment in an active migration to windows, oracle or sap solutions in a 6 month time frame. Those people are not vocal on these forums for sure.
But underpowerment and overpricing (and the as/400 - iseries - i name change) are significant yet minor reasons for the as/400 decline, the major reason which I'm not going to repeat here is well known to all.
Good luck with the platform, but pardon me if I have any reservations.
Folks: Yes, the name "i" is horrible, and awkward. You'll get no arguments from me on that point! But it's IBM's OS, shouldn't they have the right to name it?
Bob Cozzi suggested the name "Blue." Personally, I don't like that name. That's my opinion. If IBM were to decide to use Bob's idea and call it Blue, would I have the right to keep calling it OS/400? Even though "OS/400" means "Operating System for AS/400", and AS/400 no longer exists? That doesn't even make sense. Worse, many people are referring to the OS -- that's right, the OPERATING SYSTEM, as AS/400 or iSeries. They want to keep calling the OPERATING SYSTEM by that name, even though the hardware is now called Power. Is that really a logical thing to do?
For all of you who have said "I call it AS/400 because that's what all my users/clients call it, and if I call it i, they don't know what I'm referring to." How do you change that? Okay, we know i is a bad name -- but if it changed to a good one, how would you get them all to refer to it under the proper name? Surely continuing to call it by the old name won't do it! Using the current name consistently would convince them to start using the new one themselves, right?
@ugeerts: You say the system is dying because it's overpriced and underpowered. Surely that's because the hardware is too specialized? IBM can't sell it for the price of PCs. PCs are cheap because they're a commodity, millions are made, the price comes from volume. Surely the best chance to have a similar price on our system is to try to use the same hardware for more things -- making it more of a commodity. And isn't that what IBM has done by creating Power Systems (a combination of i+p)? This'll sell more than the System i division did, and therefore prices will be more competitive? Or is your point that there's no hope of competing with Intel and IBM shouldn't try?
Incidentally (as contradictory to the article as this sounds), I actually agree with pretty much everything you guys have said.
"We still run an iSeries (circa 2003) and I can assure you it's still supported. Also, the description for 5722SS1 option 0000 is "i5/OS". Therefore, iSeries and i5/OS are still valid and correct."
Well - on my system, which I have i 6.1.1 installed - if you do a GO LICPGM and take option 10 (Display installed licsnesed programs) - the third line says "i5/OS'
Even the OS says i5/OS - if IBM still refers to it as i5/OS it's still valid.
Scott, I really appreciate your articles but this time it seems Big Blue paid you for helping them marketing this stupid renaming history.
I worked on S/34, S/36 and have been working on AS/400 since 1988 with the first B10 (do you remember it?). Well, even IBMers at their headquarter in Italy often say "AS/400" in official conferences. And a customer of mine is probably going to buy a new "blade AS/400": should I tell him that it doesn't exist?
Why don't you write about IBM block-heads spoiling a good market with their "game of renaming"? That's what happened here, at least.
Sorry for my bad English...
Regards from Torino (Turin), Italy.
Gianfranco Maffeo
mail@maffeo.it
Personally, I think Bob Cozzi got it right in this article:
http://systeminetwork.com/article/system-formerly-known-as400
The solution is not to accept an obviously stupid, meaningless name (IBM i). The solution is for IBM to (once and forever) rename the system and the operating system to something new and searchable: IBM BLUE running on the AS/600. Works for me. Those are names that wouldn't embarrass us. - And non-technical people could understand what an AS/600 is.
Now some people are going to disagree with me ... okay, maybe many people will disagree with me. But really, a letter??? Really?!? Just one letter? ... and it is not even capitalized? If we still have a name, why doesn't IBM use it more often? (See other posts about IBM web pages and documentation.) And is the true official name "i on IBM", "IBM i", or an "i on Power Systems"? (Yes, I know. It really is the last one. The point is that it is the least used name. Even Scott with his rant about using the proper name uses "IBM i".)
What is next? A pixel? I can see the conversation now (quotes only from the programmer):
"I work on a Pixel #37 running on IBM Power Systems".
"No, it is just one machine. The name is just plural for some reason."
"Yeah, Pixel #37 is just a name that we use. The actual name is really just pixel #37. It cannot be pronounced."
"You have heard of it. It used to be called the AS/400."
"Yeah. It is a great machine."
"No. We are supposed to use the official name."
Craig R. Lockhart
Technically there isn't an equivilent to AS/400 - the Power6 is OS neutral - AS/400 always ran OS/400 and OS/400 only. Power6 and Power7 can run VIOS, AIX, Linux, IBM i (or name of the week club) in any combination - the hardware isn't Operating System (OS) centric anymore - there isn't a pSeries - nor iSeries - just Power with the appropriate Operating System(s) installed - the hardware may be tower, rack mounted or a blade. Gone are the days when you can technically say "I work on an iSeries" - now "I work on IBM i".... don't recall anybody ever saying they worked on an OS/400 or even an i5/OS system...
Excellent comments, folks! Keep them coming!
Ronbo2000... seriously, you correct people and tell them to call it iSeries?? Why not tell them to call it by it's current name?! See, I keep wondering if people even know that the name isn't iSeries anymore?
"By the way, IBM just announced a new system called iDataPlex.....which runs on Linux on intel chips. i i i"
Indeed it's "IBM System x iDataplex" - talk about confusing the terms....
It was easy to start using the AS/400 name coming from the S/38 because these two boxes were like night and day. Much like I wouldn't continue to use the name System3 when referring to S/38. The AS/400 wasn't a name change, it was actually a new box with a demonstrably large quantity of new functionality on board. The introduction of ILE for OS/400 was the last major improvement to the OS and that is about a decade ago now and while it was still OS/400. No such dramatic improvement to the OS has been seen from IBM since then, despite the many name changes.
For some of us, using the name IBM i may be completely moot, as that the next box I purchase may have a completely different name for the OS. I will have completely skipped over the i phase. That would be preferable actually, because like you, I think the current name is horribly ineffective and difficult to work with.
Shane.
Scott Klement,
I think your rant and the one from many others ibm i gurus about the name change reveals in fact a much deaper concern, namely the fading away of the as/400 in the mists of history, just like the "wang" or "sperry univac" systems faded away in the seventies. The root cause for the fade is crystal clear to most, but not written in black and white that often. Just to name a few:
- underpowered equipment (the hardware caught up a little with wintel servers around 2007. Typical example is the small 515 model with a mindboggling power of 3000 CPW that came out around that time; most shops back than had larger systems running at only 500 CPW. It was the last desperate effort from Rochester to reconguer the SMB market which they lost longtime ago to Wintel, alas, the damage was already done
- overpriced systems. I remember back in 2003 a 36GB disk costed 10 times more than a 36GB disk for Wintel (xseries from ibm) gear . That's why even today an average Ibm i server is equiped with ridiculous small 18-36GB disk units for a total of say 180 GB (yes, that's laugh, knowing todays 2TB sata disks cost less $200). And don't forget the infamous "5250 interactive" tax; ibm's price ticket for that was usually a 6 digit figure.
- but yes, the very main reason for the decline and unavoidable death of Ibm i, is IBM was not able to replace the Green Text Screen with a native graphical solution. The critical time to make that transition was imho around 1998, but Ibm was caught asleep with all that milk coming from the as/400 cash cow. Now the cow is dry, no more milk, and soon the cow will be dead.
Why is that? Simply look at the average age of the ibm i developer. Is it somewhere between 50-55? Is 75% of the developer population sitting in the 45-60 age bracket? And given the age pyramid keeps on moving towards older age, meaning there's no meaningfull inflow on the younger side, will we all be working in 10 years when we are 60-65?
Guess not. I rest my case, so to speak.
V6
i5/OS R01M01
It's interesting - it doesn't say i 6.1.1 - it says V6 i5/OS R01M01...
I have '5722-WDS Websphere Developer Studio Client for System i V7.0' - IBM calling it System i....
When IBM - on 6.1 documentation - on 6.1 DVD's - refers to it as i5/OS - when they put on their documentation and products System i - that tells me that both are valid.
Regards,
Richard Schoen
RJS Software Systems Inc.
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You state "it's valid to say "IBM i" instead of just "i."" - that's a given since IBM refers to it as IBM i - take a gander at http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v6r1m0/index.jsp - what does the link in the left panel say? It says "IBM i 6.1 information center".
What's interesting is that when you open up the link - the first item is "About i5/OS information" - IBM in it's 6.1 documentation refers to it as i5/OS as well. It also has "i5/OS glossary".
Then a few links below that - it says "Connecting to System i" - shooting down your argument that System i isn't valid - IBM themselves - in official IBM documentation put out by IBM states System i.
In otherwords - your statement "It's not System i" and henceforth saying it's not valid to use "System i" is incorrect as IBM refers to it as System i.