Shane writes: >For the majority (all ???) of the customers I deal with, >whitespace is an opportunity to screw down the cap, and >save bucks.
That's not whitespace. Not true whitespace, anyway. And save how many bucks? Negative bucks? :-) Remember: if the business wants it, it has to run somewhere. And be installed, maintained, supported, secured, recovered in a disaster.... We all have to be a lot smarter in understanding full IT costs and service requirements. I'm learning a lot these days. The world has changed. Re: WebSphere, for reference please note that a single X86 processor license for WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment -- that's the one that supports clustering, i.e. the typical one real businesses use for typical applications -- has a U.S. price of approximately $15,000 per 100 Value Units. Then after the first year there's 15 to 20% per year in subscription and support. Minimum real world order is 4 or 5 (400 or 500 Value Units) per application: 2 single CPUs for production, 1 (or more likely 2) for test/development, and 1 for disaster recovery. Does not include monitoring, database, test tool, security/directory management, backup/restore, etc. Figure $60,000 to $75,000 for the WebSphere licenses. Good value? Very often yes. Run that WebSphere on Linux on z and your minimum real world order is now 1 (100 Value Units) or about $15,000. And you probably haven't burned up the whole license: capacity permitting, keep adding as many applications as you wish. You may also get HiperSocket proximity benefits if accessing backend resources. Run WebSphere on z/OS (probably with a zAAP) and your minimum real world order is now 3 MSUs on a zNALC LPAR. (With a zAAP you'll probably get about 10 MSUs worth of processing for a 3 MSU software price.) The WebSphere license price at that level drops down to about $3,000. HiperSocket proximity benefits also would apply. And you already have (unique) SMF and RMF monitoring. And you've got your security management (RACF, z/OS LDAP, ....) already. And your backup/restore is already covered. And, and, and.... Annual subscription and support fees drop down along with the license of course. The X86 S&S fee alone is at least triple the WebSphere z/OS *license* in this example. Note I picked the "one small application" case, where a lot of people think the mainframe is the most expensive (and has the most expensive software). Quite the opposite. You can pick other scenarios and run the numbers. Just make sure to do the best you can to reflect real world, full costs over a reasonable time horizon (such as 5 years) for the most accurate results. (This is a partial analysis, obviously, for IBM-MAIN posting purposes. Lots of other stuff goes into this.) - - - - - 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
