Stephen Odo asks > OK ... but what I'm hearing from this list is that the "squatty boxes" > are faster, cheaper, easier to use, just as reliable, and just as secure > as the mainframe. how do we compete with that? :-P
Our world is not black or white but shades of grey. Are mainframes more expensive than other platforms? Well it depends. For some workloads at a particular scale, they are clearly the most cost-effective alternative. For pretty much everything else they are probably not as cost effective as other solutions. Does that mean we should just abandon them? Well, no. One of the key differentiators is incumbency. Customers who already have an established investment in any platform (mf or otherwise) will often find it more cost effective to stay with that platform than to switch. The existence of other functionally equivalent platforms that appear to have better price performance causes heartburn for the bean counters, but seldom results in a direct switch. More often it results in a preference to direct new work to a new platform and to neglect the existing one. Even that does not necessarily cause a switch unless/until the original platform atrophies from neglect. That is in essence what is happening in a lot of mainframe installations. The big customers who have large investments are grousing about costs, but they are staying put. Smaller customers (and there are thousands of those) really are, bit by bit, deserting the platform. We all read about it and it is happening to folks who contribute here. So it is real and we have to face it. I will make one key observation and then crawl back into my cave. z/OS has enormous capability but it truly is user-hostile both for customers and developers. I feel entitled to that opinion because I've spent nearly 30 years working down in the guts of it. And I see and work with other systems at some level of depth as well. The mainframe platform is theoretically the most secure (let's not talk about integrity holes) and it potentially has some of the best RAS functionality in the industry. However, exploiting that functionality requires a degree of effort that only the most dedicated customers and vendors are willing to endure. And without that effort, the platform is only so-so in comparison with those others. I know that irritates and annoys many of you, but it's true. So if you want to compete effectively you have to lift your game and exploit parallel sysplex and all of those other goodies your company is paying top dollar for. When you do that, the box really is all we think it is and it can be very cost effective. If you DON'T then the box is a slug and your company is paying too much. CC ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
