R.S. writes: >Upgrade is a fiction, which is offered purely for accounting >(taxes, leasing) purposes.
Taxes are rather important and (sadly) not fiction. I know this is a technically-oriented forum, but let me be blunt: whether it's 68 or 52 or 73 parts that get replaced in an upgrade doesn't matter in terms of anything the CFO (for example) cares about. In other words, don't confuse the technical with something that actually matters. :-) And there are myriad examples when people Just Don't Care(TM). (Do I care that my microwave oven contains a CPU with an ARM instruction set or a Z80 instruction set? Heck no. I care if it cooks a potato reasonably well.) Eric Bielefeld writes: >I am curious as to what the savings are in upgrading your old >computer versus just buying the new model. What are the approximate >savings as a percent? Another thought, if you upgrade your current >box, you can't sell it. Granted, the value of an older box may not >be worth trying to find a buyer, but upgrading removes that option. It depends on the exact situation: country, tax policies, age of the machine(s), etc. Keeping the serial number also typically prevents having to obtain and load more keys (for such non-IBM software which requires them). In case of Parallel Sysplex configurations (and rolling upgrades while maintaining continuous service), all of which is rather common, occasionally the upgrade is the only convenient method because there are physical data center limits that prevent positioning a new machine "close enough" to the existing machines. I think the only important point here is that it's an option, and the option often offers benefits. The option is not typically available with other servers. It's a unique (or at least rare) benefit that has value to some but not to all. Unfortunately this is not something where anybody can say, "the answer is 5." You just have to get out a sharp pencil (or spreadsheet) and run the numbers, together with your tax accountants. Mark Zelden writes: >A new ALS requirement doesn't mean the OS has to be >re-versioned. That decision is a marketing one, not >technical. Right. That's exactly what happened with z/OS Version 1 Release 6, to pick a recent example. Version 1 Release 5 did not require z/Architecture (though it could exploit it), but Release 6 did require z/Architecture. Patrick O'Keefe writes: >A version upgrades often mean price increases. They often mean price decreases, too. (OS/390 V2 to z/OS V1, for example. z/VM V4 to V5 as another. z/VSE V3 to V4 as yet another.) Or they mean no price change at all. Or the price can change without a change in the version number.... ....Uh, what do they mean? :-) [Speaking for myself only. Occasionally with some clarity.] - - - - - Timothy Sipples Consulting Enterprise Software Architect IBM Japan, Ltd. [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
