14 DAY TRIAL // IBM is becoming increasingly interested in maximizing its effectiveness, be it on the business market or inside its own walls, so no surprise here as the company decided to split its System i mainframe line in two separate organizations. The new outfits will be named Business Systems unit and the Power Systems unit, as according to the manufacturing company, the clients for this platform are basically from one of the two categories: large enterprise and small and medium business. IBM hopes that this reorganization will help the company "better address the needs of the two communities".
According to the news site TheRegister the "Business Systems unit will be led by Marc Dupaquier, and will be responsible for SMB integrated systems including the low-end System i products and will focus on the SMB client segment", while the "Power Systems unit will be led by Ross Mauri, and will include all of the existing System p product line as well as the high-end System i 570 and 595 products". The Power Systems will be more focused on the needs and wishes of enterprise and corporate class businesses, as well as "including the value of the i5/OS operating environment and applications for larger enterprise clients".
"Bringing i5/OS to more platforms is not a harbinger of the death of the System i, but rather a reflection of the importance of the software stack to IBM, its ecosystem, and the customer base. If Big Blue was considering eliminating the System i, it could have simply relegated i5/OS as an option to the models 570 and 595 where its margins are considerably higher, and leave the lower end of the market with a migration decision". Because there are few hardware differences between the System p and the System i platforms, the operating software specific to every one of them and the different application support is what makes the two systems incompatible.
For most of the System i platform's users, IBM's announcement will change little or nothing, but there are customers that may be afraid that IBM will wish to withdraw System i from the market.