Yes, IBM sells thousands of mainframes per year, that is "so many".
> Let me tell you something. Customers just don't carelessly spend money to
> the point where they are willing to waste it. Most of the time, they do a
> very thorough ongoing analysis of the costs and feasibility of different
> platforms for their applications ... it is not a simple matter of
> perceptions. If the mainframe didn't have a compelling value statement and
> compelling financial benefits, IBM wouldn't still be selling so many of
> them and DB2 wouldn't still be growing on that platform.
>
> Larry E.
>
> Bob Jones wrote:
>>>While I can understand where you are coming from when you say many people
>>>feel that mainframes are "dated", that doesn't drive the rdbms business.
>>
>>
>> I do feel sorry if this is how my message was interpretated.
>>
>>
>>>Perception of value and of the most suitable platform to run a database
>>>on is what drives customer investment. Many customers to this day still
>>>feel that the mainframe is the best place for apps that require the
>>>ultimate in security, availability, reliability, and performance. That is
>>>the reason that we still see growth on mainframe platforms.
>>>
>>
>>
>> I agree it is just perceptions. Mainframe being the only place to get RAS
>> is one of them. Funny you talked about performance. The cost/performance
>> picture is not exactly pretty on mainframe, when compared to x86 or RISC
>> platforms. Yes, there is growth in mainframe. In fact, there is growth in
>> virtually all platforms. The unit sales per year for mainframe is
>> measured in thousands, while other major server platforms are measured in
>> millions.
>>
Received on Thu Aug 11 2005 - 10:43:15 CDT
