And, of course, the support we get here from Ed and John is outstanding. Edge to Ed on ICETOOLS and what-if questions though. As to cost, it used to run me between $15-20K per year on twin 714s. YMMV because of different licensing issues and agreements, price per MSU, etc. Bob
________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List on behalf of Brian Westerman Sent: Sun 2/1/2009 12:48 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Syncsort vs competitors We have just over 700 clients and the current split on their configurations seems to be that about 70% of them are using DFSORT. Which doesn't mean anything to the "real" split in all sites, just the subset that we have worked at, but I though might be interesting to toss out there. In the few clients that I have spoken to in the past about their choice, "difference" in cost never seems to come up as a "big deal" and it appears that if you are running SYNCSORT, that IBM will "make you a deal" and vice-versa. We have handled the conversions both ways, and I can assure it it's fairly painless. The really funny thing (to me at least) is that most times their choices are based on what we would probably consider to be "silly" if it weren't that they were paying us to take care of something on their site. Silly is probably a bad way to put it, but choosing your sort product on a free poster/calendar/pen/ashtray or how "hot" your marketing rep looks is really not a valid basis. Well, maybe it is, I suppose it depends on the relative "hot-ness" compared to the ability to perform a sort really-really fast. :) There are some "philosophy" differences in how the products are implemented and used, but I honestly can't say that one is "noticeably faster" or that much "better" than the other for all types of tests. There are features that each do better/faster, and of course that's what they push marketing wise, but I'm sure that since you are currently running SYNCSORT, that if you get your IBM' marketing rep's "BEST PRICE" that your current vendor will meet or beat it. Both products have paid for their development and support costs many times over, so they have nothing to loose in lowering their price, except maybe upsetting other customers and getting you as a client and away from the "other guy" :). You probably have better things to do than change sort products, which again I have to stress is not difficult, so unless IBM can give you a price that Syncsort just refuses to meet (or beat), then you should just get the new price and not worry about which one is "slightly" better because no matter which one you choose, there will be something that the other one can do better/faster. They are both very good products, you can't loose either way except on price. On the other hand, I hear that Syncsort is giving away free tee-shirts again. :) Brian ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
