@IMG
Assuming you're not trolling...
"further cause decay of the mainframe."
The Linux stuff reinvigorated the boxes. That said, it may only have stabilized the market and now it's relatively static, but it's not decaying. Go look at the LINUX-390 list to see how many people are using this stuff and what they use it for.
"You tell the customer ... well yes while you're paying $2000.00 to run your software, with a known change in microcode, you would only be paying $2.00 to run your software ... (Prices made up...) What you've done is outed IBM's price gouging practices"
Known situation. Anyone who's worked with these boxes long enough knows where the limitations are, how its done and why. This is nothing new.
"more resilient than the mainframe."
This is just utter rubbish. No, don't argue, it is. IBM's boxes and OSes these days - as for the last 15 years or so - are vastly more reliable, have better throughput, handle the workload better, are better "built" (i.e. not so many hardware problems, hiccups, handle dumbos pulling out disks from RAID arrays etc. etc. etc.) far better than any of the SUN, HP/Compaq, Apple or even Cobalt/Rackserve stuff I've seen over the last 10 years.
(Aside: a lot is made of the ability these days of x86 solutions to be able to migrate virtual machines and/or workloads to other boxes when one fails. IBM's VM system was doing this in the 1980s. I believe that the code was eventually removed because no-one used it because the boxes are so reliable - unlike the x86 based hardware I've had the misfortune to have to run datacenters with.)
" (Hint: You try replicating your mainframe data center and then see how much it would cost...)"
Cost is not resiliency. The cost model for these two situations is known; the variations thereupon which may or may not take into account hardware failures, throughput etc. etc. etc. are also known. Furthermore, you don't necessarily replicate your Data Center. You ensure that your systems can be brought up elsewhere and most of the DR places I come across utilize zVM for that sort of thing.
What you want in one situation isn't necessarily what you want in another. It mostly depends on your business model. For example, one place I worked at spent ages trying to convince a shop to set up multiple managed Solaris & Windows systems. That was their chosen solution for the customer - they called it their "premium" solution. Another shop punted a zVM system and multiple Linux instances to the same customer. Vastly reduced cost, easier managability, less people needed, data center backup and DR easily sorted. I told the account manager where I worked that he couldn't win. I knew he couldn't win because I'd done all the preparatory work (at a third company) that let the other shop bid so low. Guess who won?
"Neither Microsoft nor RAC scale efficiently."
From my experience also not...
"The only saving grace is that the majority of these mainframe apps would port and scream on hardware than now fits in to a 'pizza' box or two."
A lot of the mainframe boxes are not exactly big. The entire workload of the German subsid of the company I worked for fit into 30% of a mainframe running zVM. Said mainframe was 4ft x 6 ft x 12 ft. And that was 10 years ago. Furthermore, the "majority of these apps" wouldn't "scream" as they're built for throughput and not intensive CPU usage. As such, IBM's mainframes are a couple of classes ahead of anything else.
"Fail because IBM's business practices are eroding the trust people had and their current business practices as a whole are killing the company from the inside. It just goes to show you the greed and mismanagement that will kill the company, all in the name of almighty profit."
A lot of us would agree with this. But then this has been the business model since the 1980s so this is also nothing new.