Re: AS/400 and Java

The issue should be resolved and explained by IBM's sales and marketing
people.  The issue is a live issue and has been coming up over and over for
10+ years.  We are a loyal group and our jobs and careers are at stake.  Why
do people continue to buy the AS/400?  Why are 3rd-party vendors finding the
Windows platform to be where the money is?

My own irritation has to do with "convergence of the hardware".  IBM is
slowly converging all of the hardware platforms.  To my mind this is an
absolutley terrible strategy.  This strategy will rank in business lore with
"they can have any color they want so long as its black."




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Booth Martin   http://www.MartinVT.com
Booth@MartinVT.com
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-------Original Message-------

From: java400-l@midrange.com
Date: Monday, November 04, 2002 11:53:25 AM
To: java400-l@midrange.com
Subject: Re: AS/400 and Java

"Mark Phippard" <MarkP=sC2JmdVpHGPwvR0lvYjcXw@public.gmane.org> wrote in
message
news:OF8E336B9E.96381A37-ON85256C67.00588A9A-85256C67.00590410@softlanding.c
om...
> The iSeries is vertically scalable (it can grow from very small to very

> large). Intel solutions are horizontally scalable. You can add many,

> many machines in a cluster. Current thinking is that you can achieve

> greater reliability, uptime and performance at a much cheaper price with

> the clustered solution. Andrew Borts posted some interesting information

> on this a while ago.


Ok, I'm not an expert on the topic ... and I haven't reviewed Andrew's
research, but I have to ask ... how many PC's (and associated resources)
will it take to replicate an iSeries?

Take into account ...

a) The number of machines you'll need to run the application.
b) The number of machines you'll need to host the database
c) The number of machines you'll need to the other things that the iSeries
does by itself.
d) The number of people you'll need to administer and maintain each machine
e) The technical resources you'll need to establish a clustered 'meta
machine'.

It's the old TCO argument ... and I think the iSeries has won in the past.

david