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Next generation AS/400 due next month

by Joanne Wallen, Computing

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IBM is to launch the next generation of its AS/400 server range on 1 September.

According to IBM, the new release of the AS/400 will include Euro currency support and enhanced Java performance including full Java database connectivity (JVBC) support.

The bundled DB/400 database will include IBM's patented 'encoded vector indexing'. Madden said this new technology would speed SQL queries tenfold, and significantly enhance database performance to help business intelligence application users.

IBM has continued to customise the operating system to optimise it for specific high end business applications.

To back this up, the company is claiming major wins for its 'custom' AS/400 servers, those preloaded with enterprise resource planning (ERP) and business applications from suppliers such as SAP and SSA, as well as data warehousing applications.

According to Tony Madden, IBM's AS/400 European sales director: "40 per cent of all new custom server sales in these markets are now to traditionally non IBM customers".

But the ERP apple is not all golden, according to Simon Bragg, analyst at Cambashi.

He said that, in a market downturn, vendors specialising in AS/400 would be the first to run into problems, as users were increasingly moving to Windows NT. "A lot of the AS/400 work at the moment is purely upgrading to protect against Year 2000," he said.

The company will also launch the fourth generation of its 64-bit hardware, which will provide access to 40Gbytes of main storage, and more than 4Tbytes of directly accessible disk using IBM's hierarchical storage management. As well as scaling to 12 symmetric PowerPC processors, the AS/400 will also support up to 32 Intel processors, and can run NT, Unix and OS/2 in one box, simultaneously with OS/400.

But the ERP apple is not all golden according to Simon Bragg, analyst at Cambridge based researcher Cambashi.

He said that in a market downturn, vendors specialising in AS/400 would be the first to run into problems, as users were increasingly moving to Windows NT.

"A lot of the AS/400 work at the moment is purely upgrading to protect against Year 2000," he said.

The company will also launch the fourth generation of its 64-bit hardware.

That will provide access to 40Gbytes of main storage, and more than 4Tbytes of directly accessible disk using IBM's hierarchical storage management.

As well as scaling to 12 symmetric PowerPC processors, the AS/400 will also support up to 32 Intel processors, and can run Windows NT, Unix and OS/2 in one box, simultaneously with OS/400.

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