Re: database market share 2003

"Data Goob" <datagoob_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<WOlwc.1860$g12.1282_at_fe41.usenetserver.com>...
> What's the price for a zSeries z990?
>
> I've been perusing the z990 webpages over at ibm.com
> but no prices. It's intriguing to see mainframes in
> vogue running Linux, but no context of how fast these
> things are and how much they cost to implement. The
> jargon is also completely opaque unless you grew up
> in a mainframe environment, which I did not.

Not surprised to hear that there aren't listed prices - anything at the 0.25 mil and up range tends to be custom-priced to some degree. And not necessarily so that sales can offer the steepest price you'll bite at - but because the complexity at that price range typically requires the involvement of professional staff to size an offering.

And, I suspect that they sell more based upon reliability, managability & adaptability than upon pure speed. After all, if all you want is speed, and your app will allow it - you might implement a clustering/grid solution cheaper than a mainframe.

But, if you want to run a few dozen MVS environments, along with 1-10,000 linux environments - you can do it on a mainframe. And with more-or-less the flip of a switch you can bring up a new session. Will it be more reliable than intel? yeah, almost certainly. Will it be easier to manage? Probably, depending on your staff. Will it be cheaper? Well...that depends on what you host.

Using a mainframe to consolidate really busy databases doesn't sound attractive to me from a cost standpoint (though it would provide better reliability). But using a mainframe to consolidate dozens of standby databases could be extremely economical.

So, yeah - there's a role for mainframes today. But then again, I prefer my databases owned by the business units rather than the IT units...so I seldom run across mainframes these days...

buck Received on Sat Jun 05 2004 - 19:07:05 CDT