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Cost of Ownership Arguments Flare Around Linux and Windows

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  • Cost of Ownership Arguments Flare Around Linux and Windows

    ** This thread discusses the article: Cost of Ownership Arguments Flare Around Linux and Windows **
    ** This thread discusses the Content article: Cost of Ownership Arguments Flare Around Linux and Windows **
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  • #2
    Cost of Ownership Arguments Flare Around Linux and Windows

    ** This thread discusses the article: Cost of Ownership Arguments Flare Around Linux and Windows **
    This is interesting. It's a truth that has in some ways grown to urban myth status that the iSeries is the lowest TCO machine for any but the smallest companies. The constant refrain that I hear is that "nobody cares about TCO". Well, the fact that Lee is reporting a "raging debate" tends to indicate the opposite - that people DO care about TCO. So perhaps it's time for us to once again see what the numbers are for the iSeries. It would be interesting to see how much an iSeries would cost. Doing the math, IDC seems to think it will cost roughly four millions dollars for five years, of which some 2.5 million will be staff salary. This seems to be an awfully optimistic number... at $80K/year, that's only six staffers for a company of 1300 users. It seems to me that the ratio of support staff to users is closer to 1-to-20 than the 1-to-200 IDC seems to be proposing. But let's go with their numbers. I don't know enough about hardware costs these days, but it seems to me that $1.5 million would buy a pretty hefty iSeries, with plenty of power to support 1300 users. I may be wrong, someone can tell me. At the same time, my own informal estimates of support costs are five operators (to support 24/7 processing) and a single support programmer. At $40K/year for the operators and $80K/year for the programmer, that's $280K/year or another $1.4 million. Oh, and if you're not a 24/7 shop, then it's one operator, $120K/year, $600K total. TCO? $2.9M for the iSeries. $2.1M for a non-24/7 shop. A savings of 25-50%. And that's with those really optimistic staffing figures for Windows support. What am I missing? Joe

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    • #3
      Cost of Ownership Arguments Flare Around Linux and Windows

      ** This thread discusses the article: Cost of Ownership Arguments Flare Around Linux and Windows **
      It would have been more interesting if IDC added a third column to the grid: costing out all items for OS/400. Dave

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      • #4
        Cost of Ownership Arguments Flare Around Linux and Windows

        ** This thread discusses the article: Cost of Ownership Arguments Flare Around Linux and Windows **
        Hi, Joe. It would not be fair to either the Windows or Linux folks to directly compare their support costs to those of the iSeries. Doing so would only be useful in massaging our own egos at the expense of our fellow technology professionals. IDC has already done three year and five year TCO studies that show the (AS/400) iSeries to be a much less costly platform. After all, the "i" in the new name "iSeries" does stand for integration. It's now up to us to get these studies in front of the decision makers. Imagine if we could actually help them to see clearly what this machine is capable of. Show them that you don't need to buy a new cluster every time you deploy a new application and you'll get their undivided attention. Show them that you need only one IXS as a spare for twelve servers instead and they'll start to drool. Explain the full list of applications and environments that you can run under one cover and how you can run things like mail, web, file and print serving native on the iSeries with two licenses for everything instead of one each on a server farm and their eyes will glaze over. Well, maybe you shouldn't list everything. Just highlight the multiple workload capabilities, number of simultaneous users and applications supported, reliability, security, flexibility, interoperability, manageability, and recoverability. You know, only the things that are missing from the Windows and Linux/Unix worlds. When buying a pair of 840's with a few TB of disk to hold and run everything, your hardware estimate is significantly low. You would probably be looking a lot closer to $10 million, but that would replace all the other servers and applications, provide an integrated backup and recovery system, and facilitate continuous operations for everything. In today's economy, that's a tough sell. What you're missing is the fact that the decision makers tend to be exposed only to the various flavours of Unix and Windows throughout their education. The missing link is the knowledge of the iSeries and it's up to us as a community to provide it to them. Chris ==_-+-

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        • #5
          Cost of Ownership Arguments Flare Around Linux and Windows

          ** This thread discusses the article: Cost of Ownership Arguments Flare Around Linux and Windows **
          "It would not be fair to either the Windows or Linux folks to directly compare their support costs to those of the iSeries. Doing so would only be useful in massaging our own egos at the expense of our fellow technology professionals." I'm not sure I follow this logic. Remember, the Windows and Unix "professionals" are the ones slamming the iSeries at every turn because of it's "proprietary" design. No matter that Windows is just as proprietary, and only the Linux version of Unix is really open, it's a good marketing gimmick and a way to avoid the real issue. That issue, of course, being the total cost of ownership, which is the single most important issue any company should consider, once they've determined that the platform in question can meet their business needs. Since it's pretty clear that there are very few business requirements that Windows/*nix can meet that the iSeries cannot, then the issue SHOULD be TCO. So, since Windiows/*nix proponents are quick to use their (specious, but intelligent sounding) diatribe on openness, we should just as quicky bring out the TCO issue, EACH AND EVERY TIME. It should become an industry mantra that the iSeries is cheaper to own and run than a server farm, and the only way to get it into people's minds is to say it over and over again. "When buying a pair of 840's with a few TB of disk to hold and run everything, your hardware estimate is significantly low." Why would you need dual 840's and TB of data for a little company of 1300 users? My guess is that twin 840's would serve quite a few more users than that, no? I was thinking more along the lines of a single high-end 820 or maybe an 830. Am I wrong here? "What you're missing is the fact that the decision makers tend to be exposed only to the various flavours of Unix and Windows throughout their education." No, I'm fully aware of this problem, which is why I say we SHOULD beat up on everyone who is touting Windows/*nix and force them to address the TCO numbers. The numbers the iSeries brings to the table as opposed to those of the server farm would warm the cockles of any CFO's heart. Joe

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