Cover Story
IBM's Tower of Babel
Business Week
April 21, 1986
IBM has at least nine major computer "architectures," or internal designs, in its arsenal of active products. This makes like difficult for customers because the software that runs on one type of architecture can't easily run on a machine that uses another architecture. The company has built up this array of architectures gradually over the past 16 years, as it introduced major new product lines:
| 1970 | The 370 mainframe design used in |
| the 4300, 308X, and 309X lines. | |
| 1976 | Series/1 minicomputer, now used |
| mostly for communications | |
| 1978 | Model 8100 departmental |
| computer | |
| 1979 | 5520 clustered word processing |
| system | |
| 1979 | System/38 high-end mini for small |
| and medium-size business | |
| customers | |
| 1980 | Displaywriter stand-alone word |
| processing system | |
| 1981 | The IBM family of Personal |
| Computers | |
| 1983 | system/36 minicomputer for small |
| businesses and departmental jobs | |
| 1986 | RT PC workstation, targeted at |
| scientific and engineering | |
| customers |
Copyright 1986 McGraw-Hill, Inc.