>I've always thought that IBMs pricing is way too complicated, and tends to go >against their old customers with lots of CICS and Cobol programs.
I agree. IBM's charging methodology has always been a pain, since they introduced tiered pricing in 1984. I told them that it was not a good thing, at the time. As a capacity analyst, that whole pricing strategy caused so many problems. We needed an upgrade, to improve service (driving revenues), but we got into a case where, aside from the hardware upgrade costs, the software costs were enormous (on average 23% per model group jump)! Then PSLC came along, and we were one of the companies that purchased a CF and links, but left them on the shelf, because the cost of the hardware was a LOT less than the software reduction. (Shelf-ware) Then they went to make you go SYSPLEX and ensure at least 50% of your workload was hooked up to a CF and then you still got PSLC. That was easy! Can you say Batch and open a few more INITS? Then we got into MSUs. And, MSUs started to match MSUs. Then marketing got into it. I've lost track of how many 0.9's are involved in figuring out the capacity vs the pricing. And, SCRT can be a nightmare, if you're not careful. And, it's not getting better. I had a product that used less than 1% of a processor and was only used during prime-time. But, due to the rules of MSU/SCRT, the cost was based on the 4HMA, which was the overnight batch window. Billing is only getting more difficult, not easier. - Too busy driving to stop for gas! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
