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IBMs midrange platform AS/400 and iSeries systems are definitely the systems for the 21st century. Having worked on these systems for ten years I admit it, I’m a bit slanted towards there reliability, functionality and processing power.

But there are a lot of half-truths and misconceptions floating around out there surrounding my beloved AS/400 platform. The way I see it the problem is these rumors are keeping a lot of businesses from even potentially evaluating an iSeries, for if they did they too would quickly arrive at the realization that they too can use an AS/400 or iSeries system to run their critical business applications.

Myth number one that really needs to be debunked is poor integration in a time when Windows is the standard workstation operating system currently in use today. This used to be a major sticking point, if you wanted interoperability between the two platforms you had to install all sorts of wacky cards just to connect a PC up to an AS/400s twinax connection along with special drivers and expensive emulation software.

Downloading a data file with this setup? Forget about it. But nowadays with Ethernet cards and TCP/IP being the defacto standard connection methodology for the AS/400 integration and connectivity are a thing of the past. Now users can download files and data directly from the system using native tools or with available inexpensive third party applications. Better yet now you users can get data directly into a spreadsheet with a few mouse clicks using the Excel Add-in or an ODBC connection supplied with the AS/400 without needing a person from the IT department getting involved.

Speaking of data files and reports building your own set of reports is really easy. There is a whole industry of third party tools just for reporting purposes, many of which are designed with the user in mind so that they can access data that they need again without IT intervention. Almost all ERP systems available on 400s have reporting modules with a variety of pre-canned reports.

In times when your software vendor’s reports just won’t cut the mustard there is a great tool that has been around for years called Query/400, now built into a web enabled program, for building your own reports. It is an excellent utility with a very short learning curve due to the fact that Query/400 is entirely menu driven so you don’t need to learn any complicated syntax or commands to use it. You can also easily save your Query/400 definitions and recall them with a simple command for re-use later on.

Finally AS/400s and the newer iSeries boxes really are not that expensive, if you have no money and want one you can find complete working models on eBay for a few thousand dollars. Where you have to look out is software license … this is where the money is for vendors nowadays particularly in the annual license fees assessed.

If you are budget conscious another option is to lease a system from IBM. Just like leasing a car you don’t pay a bunch of money upfront and it leasing offers a very low monthly payment, but if you decide to keep the box at the end of the lease you probably won’t get a very good deal. Usually companies that lease like to have a new system every few years and it works out well for them so they pay a moderate monthly fee while having the latest and fastest system.