Sorry, I disagree. Mainframe software pricing has been falling, quite precipitously in many cases, over several years. There are a variety of ways that's been true, and a variety of reasons, but it's fact. And the market trends show no sign of abating (personal view), so I expect further decreases.
In contrast, non-mainframe software pricing has been soaring. Mainframe software pricing is *not* linear (at least in IBM's case -- can't speak for other vendors). Don't know how that rumor got started. If you look at the "Value Unit Exhibits" in IBM software announcements it's quite obvious pricing is not linear. Pricing is quite substantially sublinear: each incremental unit has a progressively lower price. The fact much IBM mainframe software is available in smaller quantities (at smaller prices) than non-mainframe software -- WebSphere Message Broker cited as an example -- is indeed a very big deal. Why wouldn't it be? Yes, 3 MSUs of WebSphere Message Broker is productively useful in real customer situations. I try to avoid unreal hypotheticals -- I'm citing an example from recent experience. There are other examples, like WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Commerce Server to pick two more. (WCS is available on Linux on z.) Re: the situation of smaller z/OS developers: To convince somebody at IBM (way above me) there's a problem (and how to fix it), here's how I'd go about making the argument: 1. Explain why smaller z/OS developers are important. That ought to be fairly easy. 2. Explain what changed for the worse and how much worse (or what didn't change but needs to change, and how). I'm a little puzzled because, over a decent time span anyway, I don't recall z/OS development resources ever being "cheap." (When was this mythical "those were the days!" everyone is talking about? Wasn't it a lot more expensive to write and support code for MVS in, say, 1986?) Is today's price a record low, or is it getting worse? That's an important question, and I honestly don't know the answer. 3. Explain the business impact. A $1,000/month expense for a software company making $1,000,000 per year in profit isn't a bad situation, for example. But reverse those numbers and it's a huge problem. What is the real world impact to individuals, partners, and customers? What would happen (good and bad) if IBM were to make the change? Apologies if all that is obvious, but hopefully it's still useful. - - - - - Timothy Sipples IBM Consulting Enterprise Software Architect Specializing in Software Architectures Related to System z Based in Tokyo, Serving IBM Japan and IBM Asia-Pacific E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
