> The big problem is the mainframe costs are all up front. The alternate > platforms cost sneak up on you, and are sometimes missed. Also, nobody does the $/butt arithmetic.
I can't let that pass. The fundamental problem is the whole concept of charging applications by system size in a multi-application system. Period. It's nonsense, and it's been nonsense since 1989. $/butt? Yeah we did the arithmetic. It was about 1989, and I've used the example many times. A customer of mine had a massive 20,000 seat CICS/DL/I system that ran his company. Very happy with $/butt. On the same system, an IMS DB/DC system managing customer service - 6 to 8 seats, paying in absolute terms actually more than the CICS/DL/I system. It worked out at something like $23,000/butt/month. Guess what? The customer moved it to Prime, and the mainframe lost another application. Charging for applications by the size of the system they just happen to run on eventually disqualifies all applications from multi-user systems. And that's the definition of a mainframe. In every other sphere of commercial activity, it make sense to share a common large facility. You don't find user departments with their own dining rooms, air conditioning, electricity generation, first aid, elevators, etc., because the whole purpose of consolidating functionality is to benefit from economies of scale. Imagine, for a moment or two, that a laboratory wants to use UV light in a 2m3 space. The building janitor says: "Fine, but you have to pay for the building's entire 80,000m3 space, even though 79,998m3 won't use it." PSLC. -- Phil Payne http://www.isham-research.co.uk +44 7833 654 800 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
