Errol Van staden writes: >has anyone noticed a trend in IBMs strategy in shifting the focus of the >mainframe to very large users such as outsourcers etc? I am talking about >features such as IRD, group capacity limits, and sysplex aggregation pricing >benefits. Could they be bolstering though outsourcing wing for the future?
Oh no, not this topic again. :-) 1. The LPAR group capacity limit feature, available with z/OS 1.8 and higher, offers potential benefits if you have two or more LPARs. That would be just about everybody, right? (You are using at least two LPARs I hope!) 2. IRD offers potential benefits if you have two or more LPARs that offer the same service(s) on the same machine. For example, it could help customers of any size who have two production LPARs. Or it could help customers (which tend to skew toward smaller customers) that currently have only one production LPAR move to two production LPARs, improving the service quality delivered to their users. 3. Aggregated Sysplex pricing for MLC has been available since the mid-1990s, I believe. (Funny to describe something available for 12 years as a "trend." :-)) But anyway, aggregated pricing tends to benefit the smallest Parallel Sysplex customers the most and the biggest outsourcers/service bureaus very little or even not at all. Let me also repeat a few recent facts: 4. IBM introduced z/VSE Version 4.1 and opted NOT to the raise the per-MSU price to adjust for inflation. In addition, there's now MWLC (subcapacity pricing) available for z/VSE. Previously you had to pay full capacity. Nobody pays more, and many customers pay less, for the same level of performance. 5. The operating system with the lowest entry pricing for vast numbers of IBM OTC products is now... z/OS. Products like WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Message Broker, WebSphere Portal Server, and numerous others. You will pay more, often much more, for those products (both license and subscription/support) on a single Intel/AMD X86 core than you will on a 3 MSU LPAR (and more than on many larger LPARs, too). 6. IBM recently changed its pricing policies for memory and specialty engines on the smaller machine (the z9 BC). Those items now have a lower price on the z9 BC than on the EC. Also, IBM introduced a lower priced two-port FICON adapter recently. And I could go on. It would appear the facts support the argument that IBM is doing a lot specifically to help small mainframe customers, both functionally and financially. Are there facts that argue otherwise? - - - - - Timothy Sipples IBM Consulting Enterprise Software Architect Specializing in Software Architectures Related to System z Based in Tokyo, Serving IBM Japan and IBM Asia-Pacific E-Mail: [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
