On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 13:25:36 +0800, Timothy Sipples wrote: >1. Mainframe-only chargeback regimes are deadly.
I agree. On 6 May 1999, when I was working for Wayne State University, I posted on IBM-Main, <quote> We no longer charge for CPU time. When we upgraded from our 360-67 to an Amdahl 470V/6, we took care that users would see the same bill for the same work. It seemed to make sense at the time. We upgraded to a V/7, V/8 and 5890-300E. Each time, we increased the CPU billing rate so users would see the same charge for the same work. We also kept the charge per DASD kilobyte the same when we upgraded from 2314 all the way to 3390. At the end, on the two engine 5890-300E, we were billing at a rate of about $50 million per CPU-year. We bought two 5890s. The first one started out as a 180E, for which we paid $1.2 million. Over time it was upgraded to a 300E. The other was a 300E purchased later on the used market for $43,000. IMHO, if you are going to charge for computing resources, your charges must be in line with your costs or you will drive away all of your customers. This kind of scheme is probably one of the reasons that some users believe that it is cheaper to run on other platforms. </quote> I believe that IBM software pricing has suffered from a similar, though non-linear phenomenon. Does anyone remember what MVS cost on group 40 processors in the early to mid-1980's? -- Tom Marchant ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
