Why hasn’t IBM come out with the bigger AS/400s at the top end that users are demanding? One reason uncovered by Computerworld is that the machine is too damn’ successful already in a market where IBM doesn’t want the machine to play – its own 3090 market: the paper identifies eight companies – Playboy Enterprises Inc, Hiram Walker & Sons Inc, Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp, US Shoe Corp, Arco Chemical Co and Johnson & Johnson, all either cutting back their 370 growth plans and putting the work onto AS/400s or dumping the antique 370 architecture for the AS/400 altogether – Georgia-Pacific Corp is near completion on replacing its 3081 with 20 AS/400s and several System 36s on a Token Ring network – and the reason given in most cases is the big savings in cost, suggesting that IBM’s policy of regularly increasing software prices way above the inflation rate is yielding diminishing returns.
