Re: What About Price vs. Performance? -- MIDRANGE-L

Nathan

I tend to agree with you inasmuch as what I percieve to be IBM's utterly 
botched pricing at the entry level or "low end".

Despite what others will tell you, the problem is that once an application 
is on one box (any box) creating the momentum to get it off that box and 
onto another is much more difficult than getting the budget to put it there 
in the first place.

My opinion is that no matter how good a server the i-series is, if its not 
the box used to get up and running on the web in the first place, it has 
immediately lost ground. Significant ground. There are lots of reasons why 
this might be the case, but cost is a significant player. I believe IBM 
needs to win this business in most cases no matter what margin it costs 
them as this is where their future business will come from.

In my experience most business will get their toes wet on any new venture, 
Intel/Microsoft make it very easy (too easy but thats another story) and 
cost effective to use their architecture to get a start. Can you say "Genie 
out of the bottle" ?

Forget the cost of ownership arguments. They don't count until you have 
something that is a production resource. It's not a cost until it has to go 
on the budget. Getting a PC "from somewhere" and buying some software can 
usually be done without the hassle of budgets and authorised expenses. This 
stuff looks easy, looks fun and gets done with no apparent impact on the 
other projects or budgets. And then all of a sudden you have some 
web-serving on a PC and then someone wants something more ("not much") done 
to it.....

Unless IBM change their model to ENCOURAGE and MAKE IT EASY for startups 
(not to mention existing AS/400 shops) they will end up with the best 
technology on the planet gradually being replaced. Maybe V5 will allow an 
RPG programmer to hang up his shingle and do web sites on an AS/400 at a 
cost that is comparable with the entry cost  to getting an Intel site up 
and running. I hope so.

I could draw a comparison between the ME-262, Hitler's use and support of 
it, and the outcome of World War 2, but I don't want to inflame anyone :) 
More to the point I hate to think what a discussion on WW2 would be like 
given the length of the Daylight saving thread !

Now I'll sit back and wait for the "comments" and "facts" from the "real 
world". :)

Cheers
Evan Harris
"If you write it, they will flame"

>In my previous post, I lamented the fact that my OS/400 based Web
>applications performed poorly in comparison to their Windows counterparts.
>On my 170-2290 I've been averaging 10 requests per second under a maximum
>load stress test.  A comparable Windows application handles 16 requests per
>second.
>
>I think those who have tested their OS/400 based Web applications will
>realize that 10 RPS is excellent for a 73 CPW AS/400 that performs moderate
>database I/O, and transactions, and returns a 3-10K HTML response.  The
>problem is not that my applications perform poorly in comparison to other
>OS/400 based Web applications.  It's the price vs. performance in comparison
>to their Windows-Intel counterparts that's bothering me.
>
>Any further insights are appreciated.
>
>Nathan.
>
>
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