I'm not disagreeing about the cut-throat business practices, notably here in the US, nor the fiduciary duties of companies to their shareholders. I mostly agree with your assessment, but it's worth pointing out that the "fiduciary duties" are not the zealous commitment that everyone says. Besides the point, for sure.
I think what I disagree with, however, is your assessment that the "total cost of ownership" will be reduced, or that more customers will obtain a [z/OS] Mainframe, are points that I highly disagree with. Without specific numbers to quote, I would still readily argue that instances of new z/OS adoption are stagnant. Mainframes that sell, do so because of Linux and that OS does not suffer the challenges of the monolithic design of z/OS. Where you see new licenses for z/OS on a new Mainframe being sold are because companies are buying two. Or where business processes are being shifted/inherited that already exist on z/OS. Blah blah blah. It's because of this, I argue that IBM lacks room from which to expand its profits. You can't really make the Mainframe more expensive, without giving customers the incentive to cost-shift some of their processes away to different platforms. I'd also argue that because of this, it's not in IBM's best interest to make a reduced cost-of-ownership a goal. If cost of ownership goes down, so does the ceiling from which they have to draw bigger profits. Clients are used to pay $X every year for "The Mainframe" which is hardware+software+personnel+support. It's much safer to turn that equation into hardware+software+IBM and once you get people in a multi-year contract, you can maximize your billable items are nudge $X to $X+Y. I call that Accenture-nomics. If you were really cynical (and I am) then the alternate purpose, I'd argue, is to brain drain a company of its Mainframe know-how so it's that much more impossible to "kill the Mainframe." IBM is already doing what they can to create the Perfect Hostage Situation, which has been their goal for the last 20 years. Scott On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 8:24 AM, Bill Fairchild <[email protected]> wrote: > I still maintain that if IBM makes its mainframes installable and > maintainable by a partially trained chimpanzee, then it will cost a customer > a lot less money to hire one full-time chimpanzee than a human, thus making > the total cost of ownership to the customer lower, thus allowing more > customers to obtain such mainframes from IBM, which can still make its > profit by not lowering their charges to their customers. > > No one needs a telephone operator any more to make a local phone call. > Even a chimpanzee can do it. And now anyone can afford to own his own > phone. > > 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 Mike Liberatore > Sent: Friday, November 13, 2009 6:57 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: IBM driving mainframe systems programmers into the ground > > U got to love greed or is it capitialism > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > 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
