Re: AS/400

Phil,
    I think more to the point this thread is about IBM's ability to choose
its own pricing structure.
    In the past, IBM and other vendors have chosen a lot of paths. For
instance there have been often "per user" licenses, right? A machine and
software package could be quite capable of supporting 1000 users, but if the
package was licensed to only 1, we were "governed" by an "artificial" limit.
    IBM didn't come along and say, "Gee, let's jack up the cost of being
interactive sky high!" Per user cost of installing an AS/400 has been on the
decline and that didn't change.
    But they did find that they wanted to sell into a new market. It is a
much broader market and could lead to much larger hardware sales, but IBM
must price similar to other servers in that market arena. Knowing IBM they
looked at overall cost of ownership and used that for their pricing
structure.
    Then, IBM needed to implement a pricing structure for both of the
markets they wish to sell the iSeries to.
    Now, it could be that the interactive market will balk and refuse to pay
their price. So maybe IBM will have to eliminate their pricing strategy and
pool all their customers. But at that point, IBM may reconsider the
investment they must make in maintaining and developing some of the
interactive products they market. That is all a business decision.
    But I suspect that the real forces behind business choice to move
to/from the AS/400 will have to be more realistic than this one concern.
Interactive shops are still paying less for performance than they were
before. To move they will have to give up the features that make them
interactive shops. This isn't a new question, although some people treat it
like it was just invented. Companies have always had to decide if staying
with an AS/400 based application was cost effective for them.
    Maybe the problem is that some people have never figured out that all
other servers are "batch" servers and that when they compared staying on the
AS/400 to switching to NT or Unix (at any time over the last decade, say)
they were making the same comparison as they are now. Maybe since the AS/400
now offers that option it confuses them so they think they have a new
question.

Chris Rehm
javadisciple@earthlink.net
If you believe that the best technology wins the
marketplace, you haven't been paying attention.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Phil" <sublime78ska@yahoo.com>
To: <MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com>
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2001 8:15 AM
Subject: RE: AS/400


> I'm trying to follow along, and may be mistaken.
>
> Isn't the issue of this thread not the overall capacity of a given iSeries
> but the inability, due to CFINT, to shift capacity from batch to
interactive
> by tuning the system?  My impression is that iSeries owners would prefer
> there to be **ONE** CPW, and then leave it up to the owner to tune it for
> batch, for interactive, for a mix, etc.
>
> I don't think anyone is saying they want a 840 12-way at a 820 price.
> They're saying not to put in any artificial bottlenecks.
>
> This is a big issue for me as well.  Can you reliably pitch a solution,
such
> as Joe Pluta's, when IBM may decide later that such a solution still
> requires the interactive feature?  (Joe's solution may make economic sense
> if you're able to upgrade to an iSeries without the interactive feature.
> The price of an interactive feature will give you a huge budget to
implement
> Joe's technique)  But what would happen to you, the employee or
consultant,
> who successfully pitches the idea only to tell the company they have to
> purchase the interactive feature anyway at a later date?  CLM comes to
mind.
>
> Phil


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