Amid all the talk of Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 and Sage CRM packages it’s easy to forget a product which has been a mainstay for a lot of smaller businesses, particularly in the US, because it has become deeply unfashionable in a Windows/Intel world, but IBM’s AS/400 – now rebranded Series i5 – is still going strong and has a very loyal customer base.
Irish IBM business partner Bluetech Solutions is hoping to tap into that loyalty with the announcement of a native CRM package for the Series i5 – Wintouch eCRM – which can be accessed over the Web with a laptop, PDA or smartphone.
Sean Tinkler, sales director at Bluetech, is also keen to play up the Series i5’s capabilities as an all-in-one-business server to potential new customers in the small business market.
“It’s probably the most reliable piece of hardware you can buy,” he claims. For many customers, it is “a black box that sits in the corner and gathers dust” because they never have to service it.
Tinkler also suggests pricing is getting more competitive. “Everyone seems to think the Series i5 is extraordinarily expensive but prices start at €11,000 and you get a lot more power, reliability and scalability.”
He argues that other machines “can do x, y and z but ours can do a, b and c right down to x, y and z. It can run critical applications, Windows, Unix and Linux. In reality, it will run your business.”
Tinkler argues the difference in cost between the Series i5 and Intel-based servers is dwindling to the point where “it begins to make sense to go down the Series i5 route” although he admits “there isn’t a huge amount of penetration in the SME market here”.
The product will not suit companies with five to 10 users, but Tinkler believes the Series i5 “comes into its own with anything over 25-30 users. It’s not for somebody buying a Dell server for €500 and Sage CRM – that market is very well covered. That’s not the space we’re going to be involved in or where Wintouch is going to win”.
He claimed a big plus for the product was that it could present data from the Series i5 “in a format Windows users are very familiar with. You also get all the CRM functionality you think you might need.”
The Wintouch product, which Tinkler claims has been very well received in the UK, is described as “a complete, economical, enterprise-wide resource management solution” that enables server access from each client or desktop unit.
In addition to CRM functions, it can give users Web access to ERP or other Series i5 application data such as accounting, production, inventory, shipping or engineering.
IBM iSeries business partner manager David Saunders is keen to stress that the product is not a dying platform and points to its strengths in terms of reliability and as a virus-free environment.
He points to the launch of Accelerator in February and the inclusion of new Power 5+ processors into the product line (along with a clear roadmap for Power 6 in the future) as evidence of IBM’s commitment to the Series i5 platform.
IBM claims Accelerator for System i5 allows small companies “to add capacity to run Web-enabled and groupware solutions on the same system as their core business applications. Running multiple applications on a single server helps small businesses optimise and integrate their IT operations, helping them avoid the costs of running multiple, under-utilised servers, each dedicated to a single application.”
Saunders believes Accelerator “opens up the system and makes it cost effective and powerful to run other workloads. If you consolidate your Intel servers onto the Series i5 you gain the reliability that it brings. It is also possible to manage all your Intel workloads and Series i5 workloads from a single console.”
But there’s no doubting the platform has its work cut out in expanding significantly beyond a very loyal customer base. In recent interviews with the US press, new iSeries IBM marketing chief Elaine Lennox has stressed the need to reach the ‘Intel generation’ because there is a lack of recognition of the platform.
“We need to be able to show them not to think about this as a 20-year-old platform,” she told Search400.com. “Think about this as a platform designed ahead of its time that we’ve hugely updated and added functionality to since the AS/400 days.”
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