US channel criticises IBM over problematic mainframe

IBM's US channel is claiming that it is having difficulty selling Big Blue's Multiprise 3000 mainframe after it was revealed that more than one in seven have internal management software problems.

This highly embarrassing episode, which is still to be resolved, has struck at the heart of the mainframe's strongest characteristic - its reliability.

IBM's Multiprise 3000 was announced last September, aimed at the low-end of the S/390 market where medium-sized companies or large businesses with a single legacy application were turning to the cheaper Unix.

About 15 per cent of Multiprise 3000 mainframes had at least one "unexpected outage" in the field, and 30 per cent so far had to be repaired, admitted IBM representatives, conceding that insufficient testing had been done on certain configurations.

One channel partner told IBM representatives at the company's Partnerworld conference that it is proving difficult for resellers to sell the product, given the failures and poor customer feedback.

"How are we supposed to sell against Amdahl and others when the product is seen to have these problems?" he complained, with support from the audience.

"The unique selling proposition of the S/390 is its five nines reliability," said independent analyst Phil Paine. "MVS has a reputation second to none. It always maintains at least 99.95 per cent reliability. If you take that away, you wind up with what is relatively an expensive product."

"The situation is not good," admitted Dave Messina, IBM's S/390 programme director. "We are certainly working on it."

IBM has shipped about 200 of the Multiprise 3000 models since September. Messina said no customers had suffered any data integrity damage from any of the outages.

The problem lies in the microcode that the S/390 uses to control and manage its internal systems. One batch of software patches was sent out in January, but failed to fix the faults. IBM is now working on new patches that it had hoped would be sent out this week, but the company now has no date for when these will be ready, admitted Messina.

"We are aware of the problems and are taking action," Brenda Zawatski, S/390 marketing director, told annoyed channel partners at Partnerworld, adding that a "lot of customers will have experienced no problems at all, so we are looking at certain configurations only".

Paine noted that IBM has had difficulty managing its mainframe channel effectively, which the Multiprise 3000 was largely intended to be sold through.

IBM also admitted that this is the second major problem with Multiprise 3000. Big Blue was forced to stop production for two weeks in October and November last year while it replaced power supply systems on a number of Multiprise 3000s, including some already shipped to customer sites.

Amdahl, IBM's main potential competitor in this market, has failed to take advantage of Big Blue's problems. A forced rebranding exercise and a major parts constraint has meant that the company will be unable to ship more than a handful of its 1000 series before June.