IBM expanding in mainframe Unix, but market prospects still unclear

Electronic News, June 29, 1992 by Jonathan Cassell

White Plains, N.Y.--IBM's release last week of a Unix operating system for its System/370 and/390 mainframes marks its first significant entry into a still-narrow segment whose prospects are rated by analysts to be fairly cloudy even over the long term.

While AIX/ESA may lend mainframe Unix the legitimacy it needs to get a foot in the glass-house door, it enters a tough market in which IBM competitor Amdahl--despite having sold its UTS mainframe Unix system for seven years--has so far failed to make much headway against IBM's proprietary MVS and VM operating systems.

IBM already offers AIX/370, a mainframe Unix system that, because it did not run in native mode, was not considered a legitimate contender against UTS. By contrast, the new AIX/ESA will be able to run in native mode and will feature OSF/1 compatibility, an enhanced file system and support of ESA architecture functions (EN, April 6). The OS is being released in stages, starting now with one that accommodates up to three processors and followed in July by a version that adds Fortran support and by year-end with a third version that supports up to six processors.

IBM views AIX/ESA as part of its overall AIX strategy, allowing its mainframes to act as servers for its Unix workstations. With features like the vector facility, the company initially is targeting the product at the technical market rather than the commercial market.

"We are clearly committed to mainframe Unix," asserted David Gelardi, manager of AIX/ESA marketing support. "We are offering Unix for our largest system and we will move it aggressively forward, addressing the needs of technical users then expanding it to the commercial market-place over time," he said, adding that IBM has invested "several hundred million dollars" in mainframe Unix research and development.

Despite the magnitude of that investment, some analysts remain skeptical of the depth of IBM's commitment to a market with low growth potential. What acceptance mainframe Unix receives will be limited to the technical, rather than the commercial, arena, they say. Jim Cassell of the Gartner Group, for one, projects that less than 10 percent of mainframes by the year 2000 will be Unix-based.

"There's no real advantage for IBM to push AIX/ESA," concurred another analyst, John Morrell of International Data Corp. "There's a limited market for it. There are some customers who have asked for it, but I don't think they view it as a strategic product."

In 1991, combined sales of mainframe Unix software and hardware for the two major IBM plug-compatible mainframe operating systems, IBM's AIX/370 and Amdahl's UTS, amounted to only $443 million, according to IDC estimates.

"Plain and simple, Unix doesn't provide the types of advantages MIS people are looking for,' Mr. Morrell said. "If you want to go to Unix you can get a lower cost platform and development tools, so why bother using a mainframe?"

For their part, Amdahl and IBM argue that there are plenty of good reasons to harness Unix systems to a mainframe. "Anyone who uses Unix in a production manner finds it useful and cost-effective to have a Unix base up and down their information technology system," IBM's Mr. Gelardi contended.

"UTS gives the data center, which has been constrained with the traditional MVS environment, a bridge to open systems without having to cram big applications into small, fragile minicomputers," said Mark Bussman, Amdahl's director of open systems.

Mr. Bussman said UTS buyers often are companies that want to make a strategic move to Unix, but have large applications that can fit only on a mainframe. Other customers include those that want to move applications that have grown too large for their Unix minicomputers onto mainframes and those that wish to have a large, Unix-based application and data server.

"Running Unix on the mainframe works and it works well," said Peter Bauer, director of information services for the Marshfield Clinic, a large private clinic in Marshfield, Wis., that uses UTS as its main production platform for over 1,000 programs. The clinic uses an Amdahl 5995-700A as a central connection point for its 1,600 devices, including 600 PCs.

"We looked at open systems like (Unisys') U 6000, Sequent and HP and we couldn't see anything that was big enough for our needs. They had the Mips, but not the I/O," Mr. Bauer said.

Amdahl, which has been developing mainframe Unix since 1977 and selling it since 1985, has only 150 to 200 licensees for its UTS operating system, according to Mr. Bussman. This despite the fact UTS already has many of the same features that IBM is promoting for AIX/ESA, including native mode operation and an enhanced file system.

Despite that gradual acceptance path, analysts rate Amdahl a tough competitor for IBM, noting that in 15 years of development the company has been able to shake out most problems in its 2.5 million lines of source code.

UTS can run in native mode on all Amdahl mainframes, including the System/390-compatible 5995M six-and eight-way systems, due to ship later this year. Amdahl's Unix system can also store and manage up to 6 terabyte of data.