Your Iseries / System i / AS400 / i5

Your Iseries / System i / AS400 / i5

The IBM System i, previously know under various names such as iseries, as400 (the original name) and also i5. This system is IBM's branch of platforms with the latest incantation being the IBM Power Systems that appeared in April 2008.

Designed as a baby version of a mainframe for medium sized firms, the AS/400 was a revolution at launch - a whole business could be run using the many applications available.

As part of IBMs rebranding in 2006, System i become the new name for the platform, although many users and former users still cling to the old names with as400 and iseries being the most widely used. The system was known as the as400 when it was first relased to the marketplace in 1988, and the iseries name came about in the rebrading exercise that took place in 2000.

IBM announced the merger of the System i branded systems and the System p branded systems development and manufacturing into one unified Power Systems brand, manufacturing and development in April 2008. The all new hardware supports IBM i OS (formerly i5/OS or OS/400), AIX and Linux.

When the iseries was launched in 1988 it was released as a midrange system, between the much less powerful and expensive PC's, and the much more powerful and expensive mainframes, and was intended for general use by small and medium sized business. After all the various rebranding exercises, the current name left after the last name change is IBM System i. Until April 2008 it was in production but has been replaced in terms of hardware, by IBM Power Systems line, although the OS remains essentially the same. The name of the operating system was also changed as part of the last rebranding, going from OS/400, to i5/OS, and now settling on IBM i with the V6R1 version of the operating system.

Many features are included with the Operating System out of the box such as a relational database, DB2400, simple menu interface, multi-user capabilities, 5250 terminal support, printing, robust security, sophisticated communications capabilities; web serving, using java on the (optional) IBM WebSphere application server or programming PHP on MySQL using the Apache web server.

On the Iseries everything is treated as an object. Unix capable file systems are available using the built in Integrated File System. Java is implemented down to operating system using IBMs port of the Java virtual machine

The IBM i operating system and associated Power systems hardware is very good for running business critical processes. The operating system high availability processing and system setps, and includes features such as virtualisations. Often popular in financial services businesses, manufacturing, and distribution companies, the the high levels of reliability and continuity available for the iseries, as400, system i, make it still one of the best systems available