2003-A Pretty Good Year For The iSeries So you like your iSeries! That should be no surprise to us. It's a great machine. And you aren't alone. The iSeries eServer has received the highest customer satisfaction rating of any server in the industry. And that rating rose to new levels of satisfaction in 2003.  The iSeries has an install base of over 700,000 processors installed by over 250,000 customers. Last year more than 2,500 new customers were added to the iSeries ranks, this according to Al Zollar, General Manager, iSeries Systems Group. 99% of Fortune 100 organizations are iSeries customers. The iSeries is now on the eighth generation of its 64 bit architecture while competitive servers are struggling with the first or second generation of their 64 bit architecture. With continued leadership in integrated database architecture, single level storage, combined with newer virtualization technology to consolidate the workloads of multiple operating systems, the iSeries continues to be positioned for the future. Looking back at IBM's results for the iSeries in 2003, they generated four continuous quarters of revenue growth and the first growth year since 1998. In addition, the iSeries grew in market share during the fourth quarter by 1 point to 6%. Overall, iSeries worldwide revenue rose by 7 % in 2003 and in the fourth quarter by 2 % over the same period last year. The shipment of high-end processors was up by 85% and the tracking numbers for total CPW's shipped was up by 35% over fiscal year 2002. Without specifically stating the results, Mr. Zollar reported that the profitability picture of the iSeries also improved in 2003. One area that the iSeries has staked out a leadership position in is what IBM calls infrastructure simplification. The iSeries has over 10,000 active partitions in production. Of the processors shipped in 2003, 55% of model i825's and 74% of high-end processors (i870 and i890) use LPAR. Simplifying the Windows infrastructure was important to the iSeries in 2003 as well. An IBM survey found that 71% of customers have between 1 and 10 Intel servers installed. In 2003 iSeries customers implemented Integrated xSeries Adapters or Integrated xSeries Servers (IXA/IXS) in one out of every 4 processors shipped. In the forth quarter of 2003 that number climbed to 1 out of every 3 processors. So how could we talk about the iSeries without mentioning WebSphere? There have been over 60,000 shipments of WebSphere Development Studio (WDS) for the iSeries. 70% of new iSeries shipments activated WebSphere Application Server (WAS) as part of Enterprise Edition. And looking at independent software vendors, 140 have enabled their product offering for WebSphere version 5. IBM reports that another 100 software vendors are currently working on enabling their applications for WebSphere. So what do we have to look forward to in 2004? According to Mr. Zollar, the iSeries Systems Group has a goal of doubling the number of new customers for 2004 to 5000 worldwide. We should see a new release of the operating system and some new hardware, bringing increased functionality and additional performance. We should see some clarity in AIX virtualization on the iSeries and increased attention to Web serving and eBusiness hosting. You can expect additional focus on Linux with many additional implementations of Linux partitions on the iSeries. Overall, look for 2004 to be another good year for the iSeries.