Dear Power Systems client:
We listened and we have delivered for you, and in fact we hope you have been ecstatic with the recent announcements on the AIX® 6 and POWER6™ products. Not only can the new POWER6 servers run AIX V5.2, V5.3 and AIX V6.1—with binary compatibility for applications currently running on AIX V5.1, V5.2 and V5.3—AIX 6 will even run on your older System p™, System i™, pSeries®, iSeries™ or BladeCenter®hardware, based on POWER5™, POWER4™ and PowerPC® 970 processors. This broad support for multiple levels of the AIX operating system on multiple generations of POWER systems is the strongest that we have ever had.
But some clients have said that they want to hear it from me. We've said we will offer binary compatibility and we mean it. We are offering a guarantee1 that your applications, whether written in house or supplied by an application provider, will run on AIX 6 if they currently run on AIX V5.1, V5.2 or V5.3—without recompilations or modification. Even well-behaved 32-bit applications from AIX V4.1, V4.2, and V4.3 will run without recompilation.
Take us up on that challenge. We assume (and require) that these applications comply with reasonable programming standards, but if they do and the applications will not run on AIX 6, contact us. We will investigate and assign our developers to work on the binary compatibility problem. I don't anticipate anyone will call but I wanted to assure you that we are committed to the binary compatibility of AIX 6.
The qualities of the AIX operating system—virtualization, security, performance, and quality—have won many new clients to AIX. AIX 6 will be the next step forward in the evolution of UNIX, while allowing existing AIX V5.1, V5.2 and V5.3 applications to continue to run. AIX is and will remain the strategic UNIX operating system for IBM.
Thank you for your continued confidence in IBM Power™ Systems servers and in the AIX operating system. Keeping your applications up and running is one of our primary goals. I want you to rest assured that we are taking great care to insure that when you upgrade to AIX 6, your AIX V5.1 V5.2 and V5.3 applications will not only run unmodified, but you will also be able to take advantage of the new innovations in AIX 6.
Sincerely,
Ross A. Mauri
General Manager
IBM Power Systems
1 Terms and conditions apply. Customers who wish to participate in the AIX Binary Compatibility Guarantee must accept the AIX Binary Compatibility Agreement by signing and faxing the submission form to IBM.
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