RE: If there were a sufficient money stream in the "ma andpas", IBM would

Up front you know I'm a huge advocate of the system.  I do believe that
it it's value and pricing can be questionable at the lower end of the
market.  Steve's points tend to prove that.  They still tend to be
acquisition sensitive but one can argue a lot about whether another body
is needed or not.

As I have mentioned before on this list we did a detailed look at SAP
and the resulting costs.  Certain corporate weenies on the other side of
the ocean believe that SAP is most affordable on Wintel and SQL Server.
Other corporate weenies on the other side of the ocean were convinced
that the right way to run it (evidently ignoring cost) was Unix and
Oracle.  

I could go into more detail but to summarize we have done detailed
looking at SAP and Wintel, SQL Server, Unix, and Oracle.   I feel very
comfortable in a medium to large size installation that when you add
hdw, hdw maint., software, sfw maint., db, db maintenance, etc. that the
System i is appropriately priced.  It can, as it did in our case come
out less expensive.  Then when we looked at the needs for sys admins, db
admins, etc. (using SAP recommended numbers) the system  i came in
hugely less expensive.

The one point that I would make that Steve may disagree with is that
over all I still think that i5 OS is where a good amount of premium
exists but I also think that in most scenarios (but not all) is that the
premium is worth it.  In some cases it isn't just the reduction of an
FTE, but it's what that FTE does.  My life is much easier than almost
every Wintel System Admin, SQL Server DB Admin, Unix Admin, and Oracle
DB Admin I have ever met - which means I can spend time in other
areas.....

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces+mike.crump=saint-gobain.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces+mike.crump=saint-gobain.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Evan Harris
Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2006 4:21 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: If there were a sufficient money stream in the "ma andpas",
IBM would

Hi Steve

Let me save you from guessing (and thereby continually 
misunderstanding the different value propositions these machines 
represent) - the other operating systems don't have "that other 
stuff" like security and work management.

Having DB2 security is all very well but you still have to manage 
access to the box itself. Typically the effort to manage the database 
and workload scheduling/scripting on any machine doing anything 
significant dwarfs any file system administration such as you referred
to.

While there are some aspects of your frustration with the Series i 
pricing and positioning I share - in particular a comparable entry 
level system i like the system p you referred to - making sweeping, 
incorrect generalisations and guessing about operating system 
features when comparing prices doesn't help your case or your
credibility.

The simple fact is that the type of machines you keep on comparing 
price-wise would require [at least] an extra body, so of course they 
are cheaper to purchase - but not to run.

Regards
Evan Harris

At 04:19 a.m. 3/08/2006, you wrote:

On 8/2/06, Mark Allen <scprideandms@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

what about all the stuff that is "thrown in" the i5/OS that you have

to buy

seperately on other boxes (security comes to mind first)

AIX and Linux have that. ( guessing )   The DB2 on the p5 has user and
group security built into it.   Is administering the IFS on the i5 any
easier than administering the file system of AIX or Windows? I dont
think so.  An i5 that is serving SQL procedure result sets to
distributed clients is not an install and forget system. Not like the
equivalent green screen application.

-Steve