I should elaborate on something in my previous comments. A software vendor contacted me offline and made an excellent point which perhaps I didn't state clearly enough.
The scenario I am describing is vendor-agnostic and hyper-generalized. That is, I'm *not* trying to describe the exact practices of any particular vendor(s) in any particular country(ies). I'm not even trying to describe what IBM does specifically. (I'm quite sure I didn't describe IBM's practices. Remember, I don't speak for IBM.) Vendor practices (IBM's included) can and do differ in material ways from the hypothetical and generalized scenario that I described. What I was trying to do is give some flavor of the additional questions and considerations that might arise. The exact financial implications and contract terms are *highly* situational. That's why it's really important to develop a few different business cases and iterate through a few times, to refine the business case model. The better models even include what's called "sensitivity analysis." For example, the sensitivity analysis might help determine that a doubling of the price of electricity would not fundamentally change the business decision in favor of Case #1B, but a new government requirement for encryption would, favoring Case #2C. These are the "what if?" models that are so useful to make a reasonable business decision. Good models should also encompass all IT. This isn't just about a mainframe. OK, I hope that elaboration helps. - - - - - 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
