Re: Saving the System i: Fight Rather Than Switch

Something I haven't seen much of in this discussion:
Ask how many solutions IBM the corporation sells versus
Business Partners/Solution Providers? They are a key element,
and look to influence where they are investing development money.
If IBM wanted to get the word out to the corporate masses -
it would be to show them these great apps run on "i" (without the
army of techs to keep it going). SAP has a campaign going on about
very successful companies using their product...IBM could too (in more
places then the Success Stories buried in the iSeries home page).

One big fix at the OS level would be a more seamless integration

"Transfer" is a 1960's technology. We need that next generation integration
where applications don't have to fight to read/add/chg/delete/print data
in so many formats. How many times do we see posts on the pitfalls of
copy commands between ifs & native, or the limits of ftp? I don't think CA
file transfer has changed in a decade. Horsepower to equal/exceed System p
thoughout the range of models would help.
jim franz

To: "Midrange Systems Technical Discussion" <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, December 08, 2006 10:23 AM
Subject: RE: Saving the System i: Fight Rather Than Switch

Well, since we're playing the name game it's actually Oracle
EnterpriseOne.  :)

One thing I didn't mention below was another concern.  If WebSphere
moves off the iSeries, what's next?  When does the business logic leave
the platform?  At what point will we decide to move the database off?
At what point does the system get de-commissioned?  Personally, I fear
if WAS moves off the iSeries then we'll be on the slippery slope that
will lead to the eventual removal of the iSeries from our environment.

John A. Jones, CISSP
Americas Information Security Officer
Jones Lang LaSalle, Inc.
V: +1-630-455-2787 F: +1-312-601-1782
john.jones@xxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of pnelson@xxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, December 08, 2006 9:16 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: Saving the System i: Fight Rather Than Switch

  Lemme guess. JDE One World, right?

--

  Paul Nelson
  Arbor Solutions, Inc.
  708-670-6978  Cell
  pnelson@xxxxxxxxxx
  -----midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: -----

    To: "Midrange Systems Technical Discussion"
<midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
    From: "Jones, John (US)" <John.Jones@xxxxxxxxxx>
    Sent by: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
    Date: 12/08/2006 10:06AM
    Subject: RE: Saving the System i: Fight Rather Than Switch

    I've trained myself to call it iSeries all of the time.  I
personally
    feel System i is a horrible name.  I do occasionally have to call
it the
    AS/400 or 'the 400' to some of the people around here who haven't
    modernized their marketology.

    Name games aside, the earlier commenter who mentioned the system's
price
    is dead-on.  We are right now looking at drastically raising the
number
    of users of our main app, which in part relies on WebSphere App
Server.
    We're on a 2-way 1.6GHz 570 but need to move to a 4/8-way 2.2GHz
570 to
    handle the workload.  No changes to DASD, tape, and other things
outside
    the CEC are required.  The WAS license comes from the app so
there's no
    add'l charge there.  However, we have to re-buy our RAM (the 1.6GHz
    chips used DDR while the 2.2s use DDR2) + buy additional.  We have
to
    replace the existing CPUs with new & add more of them.  We have to
pay
    the P30/P40 processor tier jump.  We have to add a 2nd CEC to hold
CPUs
    5-8 which we won't activate initially.  We have to add OS licenses
for
    the additional activated CPUs.  All said and done it's a hefty
6-figure
    upgrade.

    Or we can by a few dual-Xeon Windows boxes for under $5K each and
run
    WAS in a cluster/distributed workload environment and gain
redundancy.

    Over 3 or 5 years, as it stands Windows is the cheaper option
despite
    higher admin costs and the added complexity in the environment.

    And, BTW, costs are actually closer to double the above as we have
to
    update the BCDR environment as well.

    I'm doing what I can to make the iSeries the 'winner' in the
battle, but
    the plain truth is at the end of the day my responsibility is to my
    employer and not to IBM or the iSeries community.  At the moment
the
    cost of the pure iSeries solution makes is too far out of line,
even
    when comparing the 5 year TCO.  If the price premium was 20 or even
30%
    it'd still be a fairly easy sell as our IT management does
understand
    the iSeries value proposition to some degree.  However, we're
talking
    about well over an order of magnitude's difference.

    John A. Jones, CISSP
    Americas Information Security Officer
    Jones Lang LaSalle, Inc.
    V: +1-630-455-2787 F: +1-312-601-1782
    john.jones@xxxxxxxxxx

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