Re: Slowly biting the dust.... IBM scalable... but only so far

On Tue, 29 Apr 2008, John Mattson wrote:

Well, it had to happen eventually. My shop will lay MVS to rest,
but it will probably take a few years.

Sorry to hear this.

Our parent company is all SAP, and the pressure has been on us to
conform. So, I thought "Hey, all those articles in z/Journal about Linux
and IFL's and zVM !!! Just get the sales guys from big Blue in there, and
show how the old dino can keep up with the kids". 'Taint so folks. IBM
and the business partners looked at the sizing documents and would not
even submit a bid. Said they were not able to compete for the price
against open systems. So, we end up going with AIX servers, and run
Oracle DB's and SAP.

Well, it sure beats Intel and Windows!

I have not been able to get a clear answer from IBM on this, but
it appers from what I can find out to be a matter of size. Currently we
are a 300 mip z890, and although we would have to grow to go with the SAP
solution, the mainframe/IFL/VM/DB2 solution just cannot compete for the
price at this end of the size range. So just where the cut-off is, I am
not sure. But I can tell you that it is somewhere above 300 mips.
Looks like z/OS 1.8 may be the last MVS level I even install. Hard
decision. About 10 years until retirement. Become a DBA, or polish up
the resume? Decisions, decisions.

On this point, my question would be "do you like your current company?" If
yes, then becoming a DBA could be a "good thing". If no, then time to move
on.

Where I am now, we are supposedly phasing out z/OS as well. But we don't
have any kind of actual plan. It's just a "direction". Our newest "open"
manager hates Windows and loves AIX. I've been hold that he would like to
have the z/OS people learn AIX due to our professionalism. I would like
that. I think z/OS is the ultimate OS out there, right now. But AIX (and
Linux) are good too. Anything but Windows. I despise Microsoft and think
Windows is a perfect example of how to not design an enterprise OS. As a
desktop, well it's acceptable. Though I would never give up my Linux
desktop to run Windows again (at home).

Well, "What a long, strange trip it's been."

--
Q: What do theoretical physicists drink beer from?
A: An EIN stein.

Maranatha!
John McKown

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