Re: The price of doing business with IBM?

"Ian Michael Gumby" <im_gumby@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:ce05eea6-39d1-4fa5-89e7-8c0d1675fa2a@k38g2000yqh.googlegroups.com... On Apr 11, 8:17 am, "Neil Truby" <neil.tr...@ardenta.com> wrote: > Pretty sure you have it wrong somewhere. > To partially answer your question the cost of 400 PVUs of IDS Workgrouop > plus one year's maintenance is US$50,400. As a non-US business partnmer I > don't have access to US maintenance pricing but I'd estimate 1 year's > maintenance only at about 20%, so the 3-year cost is probably around > US$71,000. >> Could we be wrong in comparing the '10g' release used to IDS Workgroup? Could it be that the base Oracle 10g is really more comparable to IDS Express? No. You state earlier in the thread that the hardware is " ... an 8 core (2 quad core xenons) [server]" Oracle Standard Edition is priced upon "sockets" (ie cpus), regardless of the number of cores. But IDS is priced upon "PVUs", a function of the number of cores and type of processor. IDS Express Edition has a maximum allowable configuration of 200 PVUs. An 8-core Intel server would be 400 PVUs, so Express is not valid here. Workgroup would be just permissible, although only 8g of memory may be allocated to Informix (4g for Express). So my estimate of a list price slightly north of US$70k is correct I believe.

> From: neil.truby@ardenta.com > Subject: Re: The price of doing business with IBM? > Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:18:22 +0100 > To: informix-list@iiug.org > > > "Ian Michael Gumby" <im_gumby@hotmail.com> wrote in message > news:ce05eea6-39d1-4fa5-89e7-8c0d1675fa2a@k38g2000yqh.googlegroups.com... > On Apr 11, 8:17 am, "Neil Truby" <neil.tr...@ardenta.com> wrote: > > > Pretty sure you have it wrong somewhere. > > To partially answer your question the cost of 400 PVUs of IDS Workgrouop > > plus one year's maintenance is US$50,400. As a non-US business partnmer I > > don't have access to US maintenance pricing but I'd estimate 1 year's > > maintenance only at about 20%, so the 3-year cost is probably around > > US$71,000. > > >> Could we be wrong in comparing the '10g' release used to IDS > Workgroup? Could it be that the base Oracle 10g is really more > comparable to IDS Express? > > No. You state earlier in the thread that the hardware is " ... an 8 core (2 > quad core xenons) [server]" > > Oracle Standard Edition is priced upon "sockets" (ie cpus), regardless of > the number of cores. > But IDS is priced upon "PVUs", a function of the number of cores and type of > processor. > > IDS Express Edition has a maximum allowable configuration of 200 PVUs. An > 8-core Intel server would be 400 PVUs, so Express is not valid here. > Workgroup would be just permissible, although only 8g of memory may be > allocated to Informix (4g for Express). > > So my estimate of a list price slightly north of US$70k is correct I > believe. > > Err, thanks for the response Neil. I mean thanks for responding, only that this confirms that IBM is yet again asleep at the wheel. :-( If you think about it, IBM wants to break in to the SMB and 'white space'. IDS is a good tools since IBM hasn't marketed it, not many people associate Informix with IBM. If you're looking for a database to develop your next app on, will you pick mySQL, Oracle, Postgres, DB2, SQLServer, or Informix? If I were going to build my next 'dream server', I'd probably want the dual socket, 8 core set up, with one set of 2.5" SAS drives in Raid 10, and then a second set of 2.5" SATA drives in raid 60. (Both hot swap) I like the idea of having a lot of memory, so at a minimum 16 GB and hopefully 32 GB. But if I built this box, under 15K in hardware... I'd still have to shell out $70K for software. (The OS would most likely be OpenSuSE which is free...) So IDS is dead from the get go. Looks like IBM isn't going to be cost competitive any time soon. Of course, if you're a big company and IBM does a lot of business, you can get J+X level discounts, where X is the additional percentage off the J level discount. ;-) Sucks to be an Informix bigot, no? _________________________________________________________________ Rediscover Hotmail®: Get quick friend updates right in your inbox. http://windowslive.com/RediscoverHotmail?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Rediscover_Updates1_042009

"Ian Michael Gumby" <im_gumby@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:mailman.540.1239752773.1831.informix-list@iiug.org... >> If I were going to build my next 'dream server', I'd probably want the >> dual socket, 8 core set up, with one set of 2.5" SAS drives in Raid 10, >> and then a second set of 2.5" SATA drives in raid 60. (Both hot swap) I >> like the idea of having a lot of memory, so at a minimum 16 GB and >> hopefully 32 GB. >> But if I built this box, under 15K in hardware... I'd still have to shell >> out $70K for software. (The OS would most likely be OpenSuSE which is >> free...) Well, that's the list price for Workgroup including 3 years' maintenance. It's not necessarily what you'd pay. You would not be allowed to allocate more than 8g of memory in total across all Informix instances on that server. If you'd make do with 4 cores it would qualify for Express and be far cheaper. In fairness to IBM I believe it argues that it's always possible to pick examples where Informix seems more expensive than Oracle, DB2 etc; that you just as easily could pick configuraions (4 core max, for example) where Informix would be cheaper; and that Informix's list price is broadly comparable to those of its competitors when inclusive functionality is taken into account. >> Of course, if you're a big company and IBM does a lot of business, you >> can get J+X level discounts, where X is the additional percentage off the >> J level discount. ;-) Well, yes, in my experience the larger the opportunity the more visibility there is within IBM, the higher within IBM it goes, and the more authority to discount if necessary is involved. (Business Partners have no autonomy to disocunt at all, other than of course to give away channel margin). But, again in my experience, that's no different from any other database vendor (well, Oracle anyway) ... or any other vendor in general in fact. I can't talk about the very largest J-level deals since the channel margin on those is so small that it is unlikely ever to be worth a business partner's while to transact, given the risk and cashflow costs, unless that business partner is one of the Tier One tin-shifters.