When Microsoft launched its Midrange Alliance last year, vendors serving the System i market and wary customers likely thought the Redmond company wanted them to come Windows shopping.

But Microsoft says it knows that what may be fashionable to some isn't fashionable to all, and that it just wants to help midrange shops maintain the most efficient IT systems for their businesses.

"We realize that it's a heterogeneous world out there," says Spyros Sakellariadis, director of Microsoft's Midrange Alliance program. "People have these different investments, and some of those tools are working very well for them."

Admittedly, Microsoft says it wasn't sure exactly what direction the Alliance would take and what interest there would be among vendors.

The Midrange Alliance program isn't a program, per se, as much as it is a way for System i customers to make contact with a company that could help them learn more about Windows integration and application modernization.

"The overarching interest we're seeing in any of the host spaces, whether midrange or mainframe or so on, is pretty much motherhood and apple pie," Sakellariadis says. It's deciphering what customers should be doing with their IT investments as companies continually squeeze more out of what they've got. "Modernization, quick adaptability, and flexibility is what CIOs live by these days, and we're trying to see how we can help," Sakellariadis adds.

It might be a company wanting to access data on a System i server or wanting to write a smart-client front end for it.

Whatever the challenge might be, Microsoft hopes to gain mindshare among System i developers, Sakellariadis says. "Microsoft is looking for some developer mindshare and a portion of the desktop or server, but it isn't an all-or-nothing proposition."

Still, it's all about getting business, or Microsoft wouldn't be putting up cute window dressings in an effort to lure customers inside to see its goods.

"It doesn't seem so much like it's targeting [System i] in the sense of getting people off the platform as much as it's focusing on using the [System i] for Windows," says Gordon Haff, principal IT advisor with Illuminata Inc. (www.illuminata.com). "Microsoft wants people to use Windows wherever they can, and many midrange shops use the [System i] at least in part for an integration point for Microsoft Windows."

Of course, simply putting up an enticing window display isn't necessarily going to attract potential customers, either.

Haff suggests that Microsoft doesn't have a better way other than the Midrange Alliance to approach System i customers because the company itself has limited expertise in that platform, and System i users pretty typically go to IBM's Business Partners for System i products and solutions. "The [System i] in general tends to be a very partner-led environment," Haff says. "Microsoft sales reps as a whole have limited expertise with [System i] systems. There are other companies with tools and services expertise related to [System i] that Microsoft doesn't have on its own."

So following in Big Blue's footsteps, Microsoft is working with software vendors who are familiar with IBM's System i to provide Windows solutions to potentially new customers.

Microsoft definitely sees software vendors as the starting point for accessing customers, Sakellariadis says. "We've got to work with software publishers in the [System i] space to help them understand how to work with the Windows environment," he says.

And over the last year, Microsoft has seen a substantial increase in the number of System i-related inquiries through the Midrange Alliance program, Sakellariadis says. That, in turn, has translated into opportunity for the company. "Certainly it's in our DNA to talk to people about migrating, but that isn't necessarily the right solution, and we'll help them find the right solution."