With the BS2000 operating system running across its three-tiered 7.500 family of computers, Siemens AG reckons it already has an answer to IBM’s Systems Application Architecture in place. In addition, Siemens now claims to have more BS2000 installations in Europe than IBM has MVS installations – 4,200 in all. In performance terms, the 7.500 range […]
With the BS2000 operating system running across its three-tiered 7.500 family of computers, Siemens AG reckons it already has an answer to IBM’s Systems Application Architecture in place. In addition, Siemens now claims to have more BS2000 installations in Europe than IBM has MVS installations – 4,200 in all. In performance terms, the 7.500 range starts at 0.35 MIPS with the desk-top C30 model, and extends to the H120-S, rated at 102 MIPS. Keyboards and screens are identical throughout the family. Of course, all similarities are philosophical: not a single IBM application runs under BS2000, and there is no attempt to provide customers with full IBM compatibility. Plans are afoot, however, to extend the top-end of the series, bringing the company firmly into the mid-to-high-end 3090-type market – using top-end Fujitsu mainframes microcoded to run BS2000: Siemens manufactures its own small and mid-range mainframes while sourcing the high-end ones from the Japanese company, whose VP series of scientific supercomputers it also sells. This is primarily in response to the demands that Siemens anticipates the networking boom will place upon mainframe resources. It has dubbed the 1990s the decade of the network, and made it the theme of its Hanover offerings. Finally, despite Fujitsu’s emergence as the clear winner of the recent MVS fight with IBM, Siemens has no plans to sell its 33.5% stake in Comparex and reactivate its own Fujitsu business, although the holding is likely to be diluted: a stake in a plug-compatible business is always an advantage, argued a spokesman.
