Industry experts Peter Armstrong and Nick Griffin, writing in the latest edition of Database Trends & Applications, say that IMS - the venerable database that has been running on mainframe systems for decades - still holds cost advantages over more distributed and commodity priced platforms.
"The easiest way to explain the real costs is to take the analogy of buying a new car," they explain. Along with initial cost and miles-per-gallon fuel consumption, there are also commuting costs and trips planned over the time period buyers will own the car. "Let's apply those principles to make IT decisions based on costs," they state. "When you calculate the costs of computing, you normally include the hardware costs (cost of the car), the application software costs (MPG, tax, insurance, etc.), and the people costs (servicing)."
The calculation works for one computer for one person (one car for one person), but then extended to multiuser and multiple-workload environments, mainframe costs come out up to a quarter of the cost of running applications and databases on PC networks.
To read the complete article in the January E-Edition of DBTA, go here.
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