No, that's entirely wrong. IBM is not trying to reduce the cost of mainframe ownership. Less cost = less profit. IBM is simply tackling the Mainframe market's low hanging fruit--the grunts who keep things moving--because no other areas for dramatic profit expansion really exist.
IBM sells this to clients as reducing the cost, but that reduction is either non-existent or negligible. Rather, the purpose is to get even better margins. Assume the average pay rate is $60-80/hr for one of these sysprogs. The contract agency takes $40, which gives half to the grunt. Huzzah, IBM has snatched half of your pay check, with a quarter headed to the agency and you get 25%. If you're not happy then they'll fire you and you can't go after IBM because you never actually worked for them. I'm not sure if this is Capitalism or Canibalism, but I wouldn't doubt IBM's pursuit of the later if it helped with the former. Scott On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 1:45 PM, Bill Fairchild <[email protected]> wrote: > Or become a contractor to IBM yourself. Then you can try to make a profit > by offering your subcontractors considerably more than Veritas does. > > If IBM is trying to drive down the price of Sysprogs and they succeed, then > they will have reduced the total cost of ownership of a mainframe system to > a mainframe customer, and perhaps they will be able to sell more mainframe > systems that way. > > Bill Fairchild > > Software Developer > Rocket Software > 275 Grove Street * Newton, MA 02466-2272 * USA > Tel: +1.617.614.4503 * Mobile: +1.508.341.1715 > Email: [email protected] > Web: www.rocketsoftware.com > > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On > Behalf Of Lizette Koehler > Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 2:40 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: IBM driving mainframe systems programmers into the ground > > So if I remember what contracting companies do > IBM charges one rate. Then a company like Veritas Solutions is contracted > by IBM and then they have to pay even less because they need to make a > profit. Which is probably why the hourly rate is SOOOOOOO LOOOOW > > So the best action is to deal directly with IBM and not its subcontractors. > > Lizette > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > 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 > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
