>I have found that my company (before downsizing me) was totally >confused with the EC/BC determinations. >I wish IBM would try to simplify their offerings. >I've dealt with their marketting cr*p for 27 years, and I find >their distintions only make sense to IBM sales.
Ted, what are the confusing parts about EC and BC? It should be very simple: there are two pieces of hardware. The BC starts at 26 MIPS of CP capacity and goes up to almost 1,800 per frame. The EC starts at about 200 and goes up to nearly 18,000. (There's plenty of overlap between the two so you have room to grow.) If the BC provides enough capacity, that's what you buy, otherwise the EC is available. You can upgrade a BC to an EC. Both run the same software portfolio. Both deliver mainframe qualities of service -- both are 100% genuine mainframes. (The EC always has at least two spare processors, while the BC lets you choose whether to have spares or not. The EC does have an optional feature available to let you replace a whole processor "book" while the machine continues to operate, but this is perhaps academic if you have Parallel Sysplex.) You can stuff more memory inside an EC, but the BC still offers lots. No surprise that the EC is physically about twice the size of the BC. I have heard about some confusion out there about certain things, but EC v. BC is a new one, so I'm curious to hear more about that. I think ever since the z800 came out 5 or 6 years ago this two machine strategy has been in place, and it hasn't changed fundamentally. The EC and BC are round #3 of that strategy, after round #2 (z990/z890). In all three rounds the bigger one debuted first and the smaller one second. - - - - - 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
