> As you well know the Flex is a z/Architecture box. Many developers run > z/VM V5 > on it today. This you know also. IBM will not allow commercial users to > license > z/VM V5 on a Flex machine. You probably know the reason but for some > reason you > will not tell your customers the truth.
Easy there, Stephen. Alan's telling what he can vouch for, and has influence with. He's not Mr Hardware Sales policy (if he was, hardware sales policy would probably be a LOT saner than it is, or at least COMPREHENSIBLE by normal mortals), and at least he's trying to listen. Having done battle with the POK hardware people once myself (to get the layer 2 OSA stuff released), they can be pretty tough to move once they get an idea into their heads... > > On Sunday, 04/16/2006 at 04:46 EST, Stephen Frazier > > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > >>Our company is very willing to continue to pay version 3 price for > > > > version 5. If > > > >>IBM were to offer version 5 at version 3 price to its current customers > > > > now > > > >>running version 3 on flex almost all would take it. Alan, what he's saying is that *IF* IBM were to approve release of the 64-bit Flex code to commercial customers, he would be willing to pay the version 3.x VM pricing to license z/VM 5 on it, making up some of the IBM revenue not received by buying hardware. I'm not sure that the people I encounter would agree with that (we're liking this new v5 pricing model too much), but if he's willing to write that check, more power to him. It means the difference between keeping a VM license, and losing another one to Windows or Linux (not on Z). > z/VM V5 is already cheaper than V3 on the IBM box, so it doesn't make > > sense to me that the decision to move from a large FLEX box to an IBM > box > > would revolve around the price of z/VM. The acquisition costs of a > > z/Architecture box appears to be the primary issue. Acquisition and longer-term operation cost. z/VM's license cost is pretty much line noise in this discussion (thanks a lot for that!). -- db
