Also known as Application System/400, IBM AS/400 has been around for decades, it was the first generation of midrange business computers. It served as a host as well as an intermediate node to other AS/400s - as a remote system to the mainframes and as a network server to PCs. The architecture for the AS/400 is often used for ERP and other critical tasks – this requires a special mention to industries with the necessity of extreme reliability, like manufacturing.