Harley Hahn, a consultant who follows IBM’s AIX closely, isn’t buying the notion, popular with much of the American press, that IBM hurried up last week’s RS/6000 announcement to steal a little thunder away from Hewlett-Packard Co when it brings out its Snakes Precision Architecture RISC workstations next week. Hahn figures that IBM was merely filling in some gaps. This is how he reads the meaning of it all: last week, IBM plugged a few holes as far as basic choices go. Now there are two X-terminals – basic and enhanced – two desktop computers – large and huge. There is also more choice in graphics computers. The new graphics subsystem, the GTO, enables users to add the graphics power of a 7630 to any of the desktop or floorstanding computers. These additions aren’t so much competitive with specific systems from other vendors as they are consistent with IBM’s long-term strategy of creating a complete line of extendable Unix machines. Each species of RS/6000, be it model 1xx, 5xx, 7xx or 9xx, can now be upgraded to a higher model. IBM is clearly signalling to its customer base that it intends sticking with the RS/6000 long-term. If gap-filling is a customer-stroking exercise, are there also indications IBM is doing some competitor blocking as well? The answer is yes. The most aggressive way to compete is to cut price, not introduce new models. So, let’s not lose track of the price reductions: from 24% to 66% for memory options and from 26% to 32% for disk drives. Yet pricing is still not as important to the accounts IBM wants as are perceptions of longevity, flexibility and expandability – the company has a deal of credibility to make up over the withdrawal of the RT, which a few people did buy. IBM is clearly positioning the fleshed out line as a serious choice for the long-range planner and buyer. What is still missing is a cheap high-performance diskless workstation and affordable low-end servers and workstations that compete in the personal computer market.
