In the late 1960s and early 1970s, IBM considered modifying radically the conception of their computing environment to avoid a number of foreseeable bottlenecks in the 1980s given the predicted rate of change. This became the IBM Future Systems project.

Because it implied a major departure of the S/360 concept, which would not have allowed any easy migration from S/360 to FS (just as later no easy migration path would exist between the Apple II and the Macintosh), the project was dropped in the mid-seventies due to user resistance to products which were not forward compatible.

Although FS was dropped as a whole, bits and pieces of Future Systems technology were incorporated in IBM's mainstream product line:

• the 3800 laser printer, and some works that would lead to the 3279 terminal and GDDM
• the 3850 automatic magnetic library
• the relational database approach for system files, implemented later in the S/38 and AS/400
• the notion of automatic file migration without loss of identity as would be used by HFS
• network enhancements concerning VTAM and NCP

Many of the ideas from Future Systems were later re-used in the IBM AS/400 line of computers.

External links

• An article critical of IBM's handling of the Future Systems project