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Fair warning: I am going to ramble a bit. I kind of wonder. From what I know (which is fairly little, I guess, but bear with me), IBM's mainframe business has
by krylon 9y ago
Fair warning: I am going to ramble a bit.
I kind of wonder. From what I know (which is fairly little, I guess, but bear with me), IBM's mainframe business has profit margins that would even make drug dealers drool. The corollary is, of course, that these machines are very, very expensive.
I wonder what the fincancial pro's and con's would be if IBM tried to loosen up a little on the margin and increase their potential market in return, in other words, sell cheaper mainframes.
I vaguely remember they tried something along those lines during the S/390 era, which culminated in a 4U rack-mountable machine. (I assume, naively, that the smaller physical size and capacity corresponded to a smaller price).
From what I've heard and read over the years, IBM invests a lot of money in its mainframe line, and at least on the hardware side, a lot of really cool technology and research goes into these machines. It's kind of a shame that all this cool technology gets cooped up in relatively small market niche.
- omarforgotpwd 9y agoThe simple fact of the matter is that hardly anyone needs a mainframe. Most computing tasks these days can be accomplished better / cheaper with big racks of commodity hardware that you can source from anywhere. In addition the huge price tag (starting at $500k I believe) serves to reinforce the marketing message to the corporations that purchase this stuff that is product is much more advanced, reliable and feature packed than the alternative, and that you want it if you can afford it. Why else would it be so much more expensive, right? IBM has likely done these calculations and figured out that their pricing is optimal for extracting the maximum profit from their customer base.