RE: Scalability

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Bruce Hoffman
> 
> Business execs don't like single points of failure and a
_significantly_
> reduced staff of admins represent a single point of failure. Business
> execs do not like to have one person in a "god like" position, which
has
> been what I see happen most often in the iSeries world.

This argument doesn't hold water.  You don't like a single point of
failure?  HIRE ANOTHER ONE.  Now you have complete redundancy and
probably for less than the price of your non-iSeries staff.  You can
even let those guys do other things in their spare time, like apply
patches to your Windows desktops.

No, this argument is primarily made by middle-level IT managers who want
to expand their fiefdom.  I would say that a significant number of
decisions to move from iSeries to Unix are intended to INCREASE staff
and support costs to justify the IT manager's position.  And the CEOs
need to have that made clear to them.


> And, company owners, principals, presidents... have all, at one time
or
> another, said to me... "... but I can hire someone to do that, so why
> shouldn't it be about the application _only_? Why shouldn't I get
> exactly what I want in functionality?"

I don't understand this argument.


> Many of those same people can also argue that the benefits of
employing
> more than one person is good for more reasons than we can cover here.

Fiefdoms.  Read Steve's post: three staff for 160 machines versus nine
staff for about a little over a dozen machines.  This is not about
single point of failure, it's about TCO.


> So, many execs see the limited or reduced need for iSeries Systems'
> Admin and admins more as a possible liability to business continuity
and
> therefore give it a much lower priority than those of us in the
iSeries
> community would assign to that same attribute.

There isn't an CEO in the world who would buy this line.  For the price
of support of a non-iSeries platform, you can hire TWO iSeries guys,
completely redundant, and still have a ton of money left over.  Point of
failure taken care of, more money towards the CEOs dividends.

Sorry, but this sounds like somebody trying to make excuses for server
farms.

Joe