Whatever Happened to the IBM AS/400?: Is It Stuck in the Big IBM Vault of Unwanted Treasures?

I has never been a secret that IBM's biggest AS/400 problem, while the company was using it as a cash-cow, is that Bit blue chose not to market the machine. The IBM Company restructured its business multiple times most recently as a services and software supplier, and those tho think IBM has the Cats paws in technology believe that is at the heart of IBM's issues with top of the line technology.

Hardware, including the old AS/400 iron now known as IBM Power System for IBM i or for some simply, IBM i, does not count for much anymore in Palmisano's or Rometty's IBM. We on the front lines think that a little care and feeding and marketing from Big Blue could have and could still help the "AS/400" posture in the marketplace. If you take a trip to IBM's main Web site, www.ibm.com, it is easy to find what I mean but it is difficult to find anything about its hardware products, but there sure is a lot about innocuous solutions.

Though solutions may include hardware, the primary ingredients are software and tailoring services, and those of us that know that IBM's best gamble on technology was after S/360 when it spent seven building the first incarnation of the Future System for IBM. Would you believe it if I told you the box that was built was the predecessor of the AS/400?