Re: Total Cost of Ownership

"Bill H" <wphaskett_at_THISISMUNGEDatt.net> wrote in message news:yw1hc.163839$gA5.1931787_at_attbi_s03...
>
> >"Laconic2" <laconic2_at_comcast.net> wrote in message
> >
> > Dawn,
> >
> > Your description of the experiences that led you to your current
struggle
> > set me to thinking in a new direction. I want to explore this business
of
> > TCO. But first I have a few preliminary questions.
> >
> > First, what is PICK for? I'm not really ready, at this point, to absorb
a
> > whole lot about how it works. All I want to know is what it is for.
>
> PICK is for storing an application and its data and for executing and
> retrieving said application and data. It's like an application
> encapsulation, this came from my buzzword generator. :-)
>
> > Second, what leads you to attribute the success of certain groups to
their
> > use of PICK?
>
> I'm not speaking for Dawn. The use of PICK flourishes where business
owners
> and partners require business specific computing at a very low cost. Most
> of the time the owners and partners develop the application and use it
over
> a long period of time to solve their specific business needs, making
changes
> and enhancements as they use the application. This model was very
conducive
> to rapid business prototyping and implementation, since those who know the
> business were writing the application.
>
> Historically PICK had been a complete o/s and application server all
wrapped
> up in a single box. It also lent itself greatly to reduced maintenance
and
> support. Almost all PICK applications are multi-user with record locking
> (row level locking) and other modern contention management included. In
> addition, it has a small footprint on hardware and uses much less hardware
> than other applications do.
>
> > Third, what do you think pushes up the TCO in major SW applications?
> > Alternatively, what pushes downward on the total benefits of ownership?
>
> I believe the main TCO in major SW applications are:
>
> 1) hardware and o/s type software,
> 2) development and/or licenses,
> 3) installation and training,
> 4) maintenance and support,
> 5) administration,
> 6) enhancements and upgrades, and
> 7) end-of-life retirement/replacement.
>
> Certain factors (competition) contribute to lower costs:
>
> 1) improvements in hardware speed, capacity, and price,
> 2) development techniques and methodologies,
> 3) user interface standards (across applications),
> 4) commoditization of databases,
> 5) open source utilities and software components (sendmail, etc),
> 6) functional equivalence (do by hand, don't fix what's not broken, etc).
>
> Hope this is of interest.
>
> Bill

Good lists and I agree with your Pick assessment. I would like to add that it is the "agility" (unfortunately now a buzzword) of a post-implementation system written in PICK that has made it so viable for so many vertical industries. The number of software applications developed and maintained over the last 20 years is truly amazing. I will grant that often the "refactoring" has been whatever the site can get away with, rather than what would be the best solution, so 20 year old software has a lot of awful "stuff" in it, but it has been handily (inexpensively) maintained over those decades none-the-less. --dawn Received on Tue Apr 20 2004 - 15:28:30 CEST