Clark Morris writes: >My view of it is that the software charge per MIP/MSU/latest >measurement unit should follow the same trend as the Windows cost per >megahertz.
*IBM* software pricing "per MIP" keeps declining, taking all factors into account and for the *typical* environment. (See a previous post listing some of those factors. I'm sure I forgot some.) Said another way, for the typical shop you can pump the same number of "transactions" through your mainframe for a decreasing IBM software price. Or you can pump more transactions for the same IBM software price. Your mileage may vary, but that's typical under reasonable assumptions. It also happens to be the case that the mainframe offers the lowest software price entry point for a wide variety of IBM software products because of having a minimum 3 MSU order quantity versus 100 Value Units for every other system. (And, really, it's hard to do anything real world -- like development, testing, and HA clustering -- with only 100 Value Units.) That's assuming you can "fence" via VWLC and/or hardware, which is a pretty reasonable assumption. Software costs seem to be spiraling upward off the mainframe. Do note that there are software vendors who are now pricing Windows and UNIX software according to the relative performance of the processors, so the days of straight per-processor software pricing in those environments seem to be over. Some of the software price increases are due to business growth, but some are not. Software bloat rates are also different than the mainframe; they seem to be higher off the mainframe. Software is only one element of the IT budget, of course. The price of labor keeps going up, and mainframes are extremely efficient in that respect and keep getting moreso. (That "productivity gap" seems to be widening, actually.) Hardware costs are declining across the board. Hardware maintenance costs, at least for mainframes, are also declining. And is everyone remembering to include inflation for everything? Hamburgers have a "higher price," but a 2007 dollar isn't worth what a 1980 dollar is. Again, typical experiences, and your mileage may vary. But if your mileage does vary, especially considerably, it should vary for good cause. If you can't find that good cause, I'd recommend careful investigation and remediation. - - - - - 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
