Re: ITJungle report on i5 pricing and marketing was: More COMMON

["Steve Richter" <stephenrichter@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 9/13/06, Holden Tommy <Tommy.Holden@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> So in essence you & ITJungle are saying that having CPU On Demand makes
> the machine "geared down"??  That's just not the case.  It's a feature
> that is available to you, not a part of the machine capability you paid
> for.  IMO it just makes it easier for me to tap into additional CPU
> without having to perform a full upgrade, it's an available feature..not
> a part of the "base" system.
>
> >From the same article:
> The numbers in the table pretty much speak for themselves, and they
> speak quite loudly, too. A base i5 520 Standard Edition machine costs
> under $1 per transaction per minute (TPM), which is about what a fully
> loaded i5 520 Value Edition or Express Edition machine (which has a
> modest amount of 5250 processing capacity) costs. In this regard, i5 520
> Standard Edition machines are offering pretty good value. Moreover,
> compared to the iSeries line in 2003, where a similarly powerful box
> might cost anywhere from around $2 to $4 per TPM running OS/400 Standard
> Edition and the iSeries i5 line from 2004, where the first-generation of
> i5 520 machines could cost around $2 per TPM, this is, again, a big
> improvement. Even Enterprise Edition machines have come down in cost a
> great deal. Back in 2003, an iSeries Enterprise Edition box in the same
> power class could cost $10 per TPM, and by 2004, with the iSeries i5
> line, that had dropped to $5 to $6 per TPM. So the roughly $3 per TPM
> that IBM is charging for base boxes today seems like a big improvement.
>
> Seems that pricing is going down...so what's your beef?  Is amount per
> transaction figured into your "pricing issues"?  I think not....

Yes, the price per TPM has come down. Users are also requiring a lot
more transactions. In order for the growing complexity of software
applications to stay understandable and manageable for the DP people
you have to raise the abstraction level. To do that you need CPU.
Look at WDSc. A lot of people say it is a great tool. But to use it
you need a modern PC because it has a lot of code, a lot of modules
that are coupled in ways that are not efficient CPU cycle wise, but
which get the most functionality out of the system.

-Steve