RE: Help me Justify iSeries

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Have you priced the cost of a server farm and its upkeep?  If you want
hot-site deployment, you need identical server farms in two locations,
along with the staff to keep both up to date.  Tell me how much THAT
will cost.  Heck, the Enterprise Edition of Oracle is $40K by itself --
and that's per processor.  Add in things like data mining and OLAP at
$20K per pop (per processor) and all of a sudden Oracle isn't so cheap.

The Enterprise Edition of SQL Server is $20K per processor, BTW.

Also, I agree that the Enterprise machines are pricey; have you
considered using a product that removes the interactive tax and moving
to a non-enterprise class machine?

Another point: what are you storing on your disks?  How much DASD do you
need, and for what?  For example, I highly recommend NOT storing large
binary data such as scanned documents and images on your iSeries.

Joe


> From: ron_adams@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 
> My boss has the impression that running on the iSeries/AS400 is more
> costly than a Wintel platform with something like Oracle or SQL
Server.
> 
> I'm a staunch supporter of the iSeries, however, my boss who came from
a
> Microsoft environment seems to think its so much more expensive to
stay on
> the iSeries due to hardware and software costs. How can I convince him
> that this where our business needs to be? Or, has the time come to
give up
> the fight?
> 
> BTW: the scale-tipping factor was the high cost of a backup machine
for
> D-R purposes. We're looking at about $20K to buy a new low-end 520
with
> V5R3 and enough DASD to put in another location as a hot-site. The
> production machine is an Enterprise Class 520 that we purchased in
Sept of
> last year. The total cost including all of our software licenses was
> around $200K.  I hate to say it, but I think he may be right. I agree
that
> iSeries is a stable and secure platfor that is highly capable of
running
> our business, but unfortunately, they're only looking at the bottom
line.
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Ron Adams
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