Clark, I don't know the particulars of SABRE at this time, but I do find the price quotes interesting, the reference the price of a z900, without memory. First of all a z900 is obsolete hardware, given that the z990, z9 and z10 have all been made GA. Second, while it is true that Disk isn't part of the price of a z series box, I don't believe the z900 (or any of the current machines) could be ordered without a "base" amount of memory. Also, many other enterprise class servers are priced without Disk, since RAID array's are often utilized. Finally, the z900 came in at least a dozen configurations (been a while, so my number is a rough estimate), so which one is $15 million?
Wayne Driscoll Product Developer NOTE: All opinions are strictly my own. -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Clark F Morris Sent: Sunday, May 04, 2008 6:44 AM To: IBM-MAIN@BAMA.UA.EDU Subject: (Mainframe has competition was fwd) Re: COBOL Compiler for Windows The following discussion on comp.lang.cobol may prove interesting. I would be curious to read if any of the major claims such as American Airlines Sabre moving totally to Unix are wrong. Clark Morris On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:38:36 -0500, in comp.lang.cobol Robert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:58:52 -0600, Howard Brazee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >On Thu, 1 May 2008 02:56:51 +1200, "Pete Dashwood" ><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >>> It's not free, though. It's not even cheap. Emulating the mainframe >>> operating environment is not trivial. >> >>Sure it is. >> >>But the people who want it are used to paying through the nose so why >>disappoint them? >> >>One day the mainframe world will wake up to the fact that they have a >>choice. There WAS a time when mainframe hardware was the only game in town >>and vendors (both hardware and software) could charge anything they liked. > >Why should they worry about emulating the mainframe environment on a >PC? > >The future of mainframes is as a component in the system. It will be >the database full of security rules and powerful behind-the-scenes >action. There is no reason to duplicate real data on PCs (security >audits will make sure we don't), nor to create allowable test data. >The DBAs and systems people will handle that component, just as the >network people handle the routers and ports. Unix database servers are already doing the same, cheaper. For example, Sabre (airline reservations, Travelocity) cut its total expenses 50% when it switched from mainframe to Unix. It handles 15,000 transactions per second. The database resides on 17 HP S86000 boxes (now obsolete). For example, US telephone networks run entirely on Unix machines. About 10 servers handle 200,000 transactions (calls) per second. Each transaction creates at least one database row. For example, PULSE, the largest ATM/EFT clearing system in the US, runs entirely on Unix servers. "The base zSeries 990-332 machine, without disk and memory, costs around $15 million. If you had to beef it up with an appropriate amount of memory and disk, the mainframe hardware might cost $30 million. If you have to add monthly software fees for three years to this machine, it is probably on the order of $50 million for this machine over three years, including maintenance. Mainframes don't have list prices--which used to be against the law for IBM--so it is hard to say for sure. Even if you assume a 50 percent discount, after adding in the software costs, you are talking about $55 per TPM. That's a 10 to 1 price premium. And it will get worse as the Power6 and Power7 generations roll out, unless IBM consolidates the zSeries into one of these future Power-based servers. And that is why many people believe IBM will do just that, as it has already done with its proprietary OS/400-based servers." http://www.itjungle.com/tug/tug120204-story02.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
