We've seen that many of our midrange projects end up costing much more than the mainframe solution they replaced.
The problem we've seen is that its usually too late to bring the application back after it migrates regardless of how much more expensive it becomes. If you look at your numbers, you may find the "much more expensive" mainframe wasn't so expensive after all. Even if the perception that the mainframe is too expensive turns out to be true after reviewing all of the cost factors, there are ways to reduce many of the cost factors and keep the mainframe infrastructure cost effective. We've seen IBM give us ridiculously high MIP estimates for new mainframe projects as Norris had mentioned, and CEC based software contracts have caused unnecessarily high cpu upgrade costs, but we still feel that our mainframe environment (with proper financial care and feeding) continues to provide significant contribution to IT value at our company. Maybe someday alternative non-mainframe computing will be best for all our work but if we can wait a little longer those solutions will only be better (cheaper?) next year... Mp Welch Sprint 214-215-7284 -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Craddock, Chris Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2005 1:14 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Another - Another One Bites the Dust > [snip] > Reliability is only one part of the equation. > [snip] > Good points, however I was responding to the idea that running a > simple app on a single box somehow proves that the server boxes are > now on par with mainframe reliablility, and that's not a logical > comparison. Sure its a valid comparison. The only thing a user cares about is the result. They might have a bit of tourist curiosity, but as long as they get their job done on time, they generally don't care HOW it gets done. So if it takes two or more redundant (but very cheap) boxes to do the job of a single (much more expensive) mainframe the user probably doesn't care. Moreover, the business may actually prefer the lower price, even if it comes at the cost of a bit more operational complexity. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
