Not wanting to mention the politics but it is a huge mistaken belief that
privatizing government is efficient use of tax dollars. Not in this case.
In the short and long term me and my associate could have rewritten the
application using freeware from any number of platforms in the same time
period that the vendor in planning to implement their custom solution.
Mainframe not withstanding.
Steve Domarski 352-368-8350
Property Appraisers Office Marion County Florida USA
"Great minds discuss Ideas.
Average minds discuss events.
Small minds discuss people. " - Admiral Hyman Rickover
Colin Allinson
<[EMAIL PROTECTED] To:
IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU
eus.com> cc:
Sent by: The IBM Subject: Re: Another long slow
decline.
z/VM Operating
System
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]
UARK.EDU>
11/06/2006 11:43
AM
Please respond
to The IBM z/VM
Operating System
Steve_Domarski Wrote:
>> And so it begins,
>> Management has decided after a year of thinking that the era of the
>> mainframe is over here.
>> ........
I think it is not just beginning but is well under way in most places. Part
of this is a sort of 'religious belief' in the conventional wisdom that
anything that is not a mainframe will be cheaper (more cost effective) and
will run modern systems better. Any arguments to the contrary, no matter
how well supported by facts, are immediately dismissed as being presented
by those stuck in the past with a vested interest in retaining mainframes.
It seems to be a case of 'everybody else is doing it so it must be right -
don't confuse me with the facts'.
Here, like many places, there is a definite plan to eliminate mainframes
from the organisation at almost any cost. Luckily for me it will take
longer than most places, because of heavy reliance on TPF for our core
business, so I should see it to retirement.
Having said all this I do agree with what Steve implies, IBM are not
entirely blameless in this decline.
1. When the Z/series with IFL's was announced a subtle change in
the emphasis would have made a huge difference. If this had been announced
as primarily a shared LINUX server that had the additional benefit of
**also** running legacy mainframe code then there is a chance it would not
have been tarred with the mainframe brush.
2. Software pricing has long been the bane of mainframe economics
(with some justification). It is perfectly true that development and
support costs must be reclaimed but the argument for maintaining high
software costs for products that are now stabilised / out of support is
much harder to justify. We are currently going through a software cost
reduction exercise and are looking at the most expensive products first.
Some that are no longer current fall into this category so we have found
free or reduced cost alternatives. If IBM had reduced the monthly cost for
outdated products to a more reasonable figure then we would probably not
have even questioned them - as it is we eliminate the product and both we
and IBM lose.
Colin Allinson
(speaking for myself)
