RE: Is the death of CFINT available for current AS/400 owners?

Isn't it a little premature to decide the "goodness" or "badness" of this
change?  How much of this information is based on fact and how much is being
"read between the lines"?  Frankly, I think we should give this thing a
chance to unwind before we decide to turn our backs on IBM's newest
statement of direction...... 

Eric DeLong
Sally Beauty Company
MIS-Project Manager (BSG)
940-898-7863 or ext. 1863



-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Pluta [mailto:joepluta@PlutaBrothers.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 12:49 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: Is the death of CFINT available for current AS/400 owners?


From: Ray
>
> The price of the Enterprise Edition reflects the costs of the software and
> the interactive processing feature, so it can cost quite a bit
> more than the
> Standard Edition. For example, on the i810, a barebones server
> configuration
> costs $12,000 with Standard Edition packaging and $78,000 with Enterprise
> Edition. On an i870 8-way configuration, Standard Edition costs $400,000,
> and Enterprise Edition costs $1.33 million.

So, from looking at the new pricing (remembering that a 370CPW model 270 was
roughly $10K before the announcement), it looks like low-end machines with
zero CPW haven't really changed that much in pricing (or am I missing
something?).

I am underwhelmed.

The vaunted "death of the interactive" simply means that rather than allow
you to decide how much interactive you need, IBM instead has a single
interactive feature for each model, priced at somewhere between $65K and a
million bucks.  Granted it's cheaper than the ridiculous $7 million they
were charging on the high end model 890, but interactive still ain't free,
folks - in fact, it's pretty damned pricy and now you can't tailor it
either.

What this announcement is, frankly, is wonderful marketing spin.  They're
bandying about terms like "death of interactive tax" and so on (actually,
they're letting the press rags and these lists do the shilling for them),
but if you look behind the curtain, IBM haven't really DONE anything.  The
same boxes, the same governor, less choices.  My guess is that if you run
interactive jobs on a "Standard Edition" machine, you're going to see CFINT.
And the "Enterprise Edition" machines cost a WHOLE BUNCH MORE than the
"Standard Edition" machines.

SO, what has REALLY changed?  All that's happened is that the choice for
each mdoel has been REDUCED to two: Standard Edition means "no interactive,
but relatively cheap", while "Enterprise Edition" means "lots and lots of
extra money for interactive capabilities".

At this point, I'd be sitting back and saying, "Where's the beef?"

Joe

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