[dundee] Dundee City Council goes Linux!

[Martin Habets]

 --- Andrew Clayton <andrew at digital-domain.net> wrote: > On Sat,
2003-12-06 at 10:59, Mark Harrigan wrote:
> > Hrm, one IBM Z-Series 800 says no the tax will not fall. The only
> price I
> > can find for one is $400,000 in basic trim which translates into
> more
> > than 230,000 of our quids and then there's a nice juicey IBM
> support
> > contract to add to the mix :) 
> > 
> > I reckon getting that all up and playing nice probably destroyed
> a lot
> > of a half million...
> > 

IBM usually includes hardware upgrades in it's maintainance contract,
so the machine won't need a full replacement for a number of years.
And I would expect that the Dundee council can reduce their IT staff
(basically outsourcing some to IBM).

> Perhaps... but then again, they could be spending a lot more than
> that
> [1] with their current setup....
> 
> 
> [1] Either with the M$ TAX or if they are on some other proprietary
> system, then the maintenance costs of those *systems* won't come
> cheap... hmm...e.g, why is everyone switching from Solaris/SPARC to
> Linux/x86....

It is mainly down to the anual hardware costs, and the speed
increases on the x86 side.
Sun just got down from a 24 month cycle to an 18 month cycle, whereas
x86 is at a 6 month cycle (or a bit less).
Then you factor in the hardware costs: upgrade a $7000 Sun box every
5 years, or upgrade a $2000 x86 box every 2 years...
Yeah, the Sun looks good, but you're working on older slower hardware
for 3 years out of 5. Sun is desperately trying to get to smaller
development cycles, and you can see why.

Linux has made the comparison possible between these 2 platforms
because the porting costs are pretty low, and Linux now covers most/
everything/more than Solaris has.

Martin


________________________________________________________________________
BT Yahoo! Broadband - Save £80 when you order online today. Hurry! Offer ends 21st December 2003. The way the internet was meant to be. http://uk.rd.yahoo.com/evt=21064/*http://btyahoo.yahoo.co.uk