Jim Marshall wrote:
Just a heads up for those running SoftwareAG products like ADABAS to have your IT Financial folks contact the local rep. I am planning an upgrade to z9BC's where I go from 688MIPS/119MSUs to 745MIPS/104MSUs and the May inquiry said no upgrade fees (they charge for MSUs). Got a panic call asking if I was still doing the upgrade and to inform me of a recent change to pricing. There is "Pre-z9" rates and then "z9 RATES". The long and short is a $138K upgrade charge to go from 119 MSUs to 104 MSUs.
Pricing by MSUs generally means you completely understand (and are committed to allowing your customers to take advantage of) the 10% "technology dividend" afforded each new generation of mainframe processor hardware since the z900. I'm guessing that someone panicked when they realized that your processor upgrade actually amounted to a decrease in MSU. So, they scrambled to invent a new policy to ensure no revenue loss at your account.
IMHO, they've really done the wrong thing here. The MIPS "explosion" isn't stopping just because your company was able to sneak by with a marginal increase. That's an atypical case for the industry as a whole (excluding, of course, those shops that are stupidly trying to eliminate the mainframe).
The last mainframe server share/momentum numbers coming out of the IDC Quarterly Server Tracker that I studied carefully were from Q305. At that time, mainframe capacity grew 28% year-over-year and it was the largest MIPS quarter in history. (IBM also had the highest quarterly mainframe hardware revenue since 4Q98).
This issue is analogous to what has happened with Realtor commissions in the USA. While prices skyrocketed, so did the money being paid to Realtors for doing exactly the same amount of work. Their recalcitrance and utter failure to negotiate better terms with their customers led to the formation of lower-cost alternatives like CataList (http://www.catalisthomes.com/aboutMission.aspx).
The free market is a wonderful thing... -- Edward E Jaffe Phoenix Software International, Inc 5200 W Century Blvd, Suite 800 Los Angeles, CA 90045 310-338-0400 x318 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
