There is a new series of videos posted to IBM TV that I found interesting. First, start here:
http://www.ibm.com/software/info/television/index.jsp Click on the "Select a topic" button, then choose either Systems & Storage (or Software) and navigate to the System z -> All media types section. You'll then get a list of videos. Several are interesting, but look for the "Scorpion series" and start with part 1 if you want to view the cost-related ones. One thing I actually disagree with slightly in Part 1 is the speaker's statement, "Everybody knows the cost of their mainframe software," as if it's a fixed given. That may be a U.S.-oriented perspective perhaps, or perhaps it was an oversimplification for a short video. But I've met a lot of customers that have many misperceptions in this area, and many do not manage their software portfolios optimally. That's regardless of platform. Software mismanagement includes not optimizing what you've got for cost, and not keeping the portfolio in line with current needs. In simple terms you buy software to avoid labor. Theoretically you could buy a machine and hire your own army to write an operating system, middleware, tools and utilities, etc. When computing first started, that's what you had to do. It's expensive, so almost no one writes all their own software. Even big software companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle with seemingly endless programmer resources still buy lots of software. But where you draw that line (between "buy" and "build") varies and will likely change over time as labor costs change. Typically that line should move up over time, because typically labor costs are increasing, and the ability of software vendors to spread those costs is increasing, especially due to international software market expansion. That's a universal pair of trends, not platform-specific. Balanced against that is the fact that your own software code is your business because it's just for you, so you don't have to modify your business to match more general-purpose software. Which is yet another reason why Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), to meld your own software bits seamlessly with the commercial stuff, is so important, but that's a topic for another day. The correct answer may be, given these trends, "Buy more software, but optimize well." On the "buy more" side, I generally favor looking first at application developer productivity, because that's where you'll find significant IT cost. That's also where business benefits result, if developers can deliver quicker and with higher quality. I get very concerned with organizations where this "software line" in the developer productivity area hasn't moved in 20+ years: that's often a big warning sign that there's mismanagment. Anyway, I found the videos interesting and pass them along. - - - - - 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
