"Jim Marshall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > What I am hoping for in the future is the Bill Gates strategy (sell an entire > operating for $79) and make billions. What if Strobe was so reasonable, that > every z/OS shop in the world could afford to use it and would not live without > it. The volume would make up for the change in price. MXG has proven this is > a great strategy to use.
That would have to start with IBM, because unless z/OS is in every home the economies of scale just don't permit that kind of pricing for mainframes. Consider the recent article (don't have the link handy) where IBM had indicated there were approx 10K installed mainframes worldwide. How much revenue would that generate at $79 per license? Not much. Consider also that a PC operating system does not support thousands of users concurrently. So the cost has to reflect the benefit. The 'per seat' licensing makes more sense, but still doesn't reflect the value received. For example, could one really claim that the value of a Windows OS is the same per user as a mainframe OS to a large corporation? I doubt it. Pricing is, and probably always will be, simply based upon what the market will bear. Those who are good at pricing will stay in business, while those who aren't (setting them either too high or too low) will not. Of course, the question of z/OS in every home comes back to that tired old discussion about making it affordable to those who want it (re: Hercules, emulation, PSI, et. al.). Regards, Dean ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
