RE: Scalability

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Bruce Hoffman
> 
> by the same token, you can hire 3, 4, 5... maybe more (depending on
what
> part of the country you're from) non-iSeries support personnel for the
> same cost of TWO iSeries guys.

My experience is the exact opposite.  Many of the guys in our operations
department had no IT experience, nor did they need any.  Supporting an
iSeries is one of the last unskilled jobs in the IT department.  You
flip the tapes, you print the reports, you answer the messages, you
clear the queues, you run the backups, you call development when a nasty
message comes up.

Now, that's not to say there aren't some iSeries support tasks that
require technical expertise.  TCP/IP setup can be a pain, WebSphere
setup can be a pain.  Applying PTFs requires a little more knowledge
than, "Do you want fries with that?"  But in a typical small shop, the
entire technical side of the support job requires the equivalent of
maybe half a full-time person.  Probably closer to a quarter.  I can't
think of any daily support functions that require two hours a day every
day.

On the other hand, how many Microsoft Certified Software Engineers does
it take to run a server farm?  And they're not exactly cheap.  The same
with Unix.  Get a couple dozen Unix servers running and see how many
people it takes to keep the operating system (much less your application
program and database) patched and running.

Joe