Application System/400

What Does Application System/400 Mean?

Application System/400 (AS/400) is a family of computers that was designed by IBM for small- and medium-sized companies that was introduced in 1988. During its worldwide debut, IBM and its global IBM business partners, rolled out more than 1,000 software packages, making it the largest simultaneous announcement of applications in the history of computers.

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Techopedia Explains Application System/400

The AS/400 was quickly adapted worldwide and became one of the world’s most popular business computing systems. By 1997, IBM has shipped about half a million units. As a press stunt, the 400,000th unit was presented to Greg LeMond, an entrepreneur and three-time winner of the Tour de France, in October 1996. The AS/400s operating system provides a wide breadth of functions and services within a single, fully integrated system. The system’s software environment included a relational database and also ensured that programs from its predecessor, System/38, could be run as is on the AS/400, although older System/36 programs had to be recompiled.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…