IBM announced today that it will attempt to migrate potentially thousands of customers, in what its calling an unprecedented effort.
The company will look to migrate thousands of customers who use IBMs AS/400 “Green Screen” applications to its newer eServer iSeries technology.
The mainframe-class partitioning technology of the eServer allows small and mid-sized businesses to consolidate multiple workloads into a single server.
To make the migration more palatable, IBM is offering discounts of up to 50 percent for those making the switch by year-end. IBM, of Armonk, New York, will also provide some similar discounts on software and subscriptions for customers who make the move in the third quarter.
Buell Duncan, general manager for IBM eServer iSeries, said in a press release that countless AS/400 customers would like to modernize the systems, but that price has been a barrier.
With eServer, customers can upgrade their infrastructure and keep the applications they have run for years, according to Duncan.
IBM estimates there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 AS/400 systems in the United States and about 250,000 users worldwide.