RE: Is TPM's Linux vs. IBM i pricing comparison valid?

I'm sure that you're right, people underestimate those costs by a huge amount.

A couple of years back I was forwarded a software maintenance bill (for around $40K) simply because it said IBM on it. It turned out to be the yearly maintenance bill for DB2 on 4 Windows servers that were also running some other product (in another department.)

So besides the acquisition cost, administration cost and software costs for 4 PC servers there was an additional $40K per year just for DB2 maintenance? I have no idea what the additional maintenance costs are for Windows and the other software on those servers but I have to assume they aren't "free."

You can attempt to compare running IBM i to some version of RHEL and MySQL with support (or anything else,) but you're going to miss lots of extra costs, both tangible and intangible. How many of these TCO comparisons even mention the cost of DR? Does anyone have a real world comparison of Red Hat Premium Support vs. IBM support?


Regards,
 
Scott Ingvaldson
Senior IBM Support Specialist
Midwest Region Data Center
Fiserv.



-----Original Message-----
From: Bryce Martin [mailto:BMartin@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2010 1:49 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Is TPM's Linux vs. IBM i pricing comparison valid?

I think the intangable costs that are missing is the key. The efficiency
of the integrated OS/DB gets minimized way too much. Its magnitudes
easier to administer IBM i than it is to administer Linux/Unix with a
plethora of other DB options. And that is just one example.


Thanks
Bryce Martin
Programmer/Analyst I