“It’s in there; it’s all in there!” exclaims the TV commercial for a well-known brand of spaghetti sauce. Instead of buying the ingredients and making your own sauce, argues the narrator for this commercial, you simply can buy a jar of this spaghetti sauce and know that all the good, fresh ingredients you would use are already in there. Glenn Van Benschoten, the system product manager for the AS/400, likes to use the spaghetti sauce analogy when he is describing the integrated nature of the AS/400:Whatever you need for your AS/400, “It’s all in there.”

The AS/400 is an integrated system, and this characteristic sets the AS/400 apart from most other systems. Integration in a computer system means the various parts work together as a whole. The value of integration for a customer is that the system is easier to install, maintain, and use, which usually results in lower operational costs for a business.

If you were to ask a developer from Rochester why the AS/400 is a successful system, you would likely get the answer that Rochester knows how to build the best multiuser commercial systems. If you press a little harder and ask why, the developer will probably begin to compare specific features, such as the database or the security structure, with other systems. Yes, the AS/400 has a great database and a good security structure, but so do other systems. The value of the AS/400, which many of our developers either miss or take for granted, is that all components are designed to work together to provide a system that is greater than the sum of its parts.