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Cheryl's List #79 -
July 3, 2003
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    1. New Migration Offering
    2. Cheryl Watson's TUNING Letter 2003, No. 3 

    1.  New Migration Offering

    We understand that IBM and IBM business partners are providing an exceptionally attractive migration offering to customers who are running on non-zSeries machines.  The intention is to move customers from older systems to the current zSeries machines running z/OS.  The offer only applies to customers on stand-alone non-zSeries machines, between 235 and 1500 MIPS and who are running OS/390.  Even if you have an older machine and have followed IBM's strong recommendation to move to z/OS, you might still have a chance at this offer.

    So what is the offering?  It's up to 50% off on z/OS for 36 months and lower maintenance costs delivered with the newer hardware.  The price of the software will revert back to normal pricing after three years.  For some installations, the three year savings can offset hardware acquisition costs by 70% and creative financing may further lower the monthly costs.  This applies to only z900 and z990 machines.  There are already several offerings to provide this type of pricing on z800 machines.  

    One example was a move from a 536 MIPS G6-Z37 to a 575 MIPS z900-2C2.  Without the offering, this move might cost almost $900,000 over three years.  That includes the increased cost of software, hardware and maintenance.  With this migration offering, the move would cost only $185,000.  Wouldn't it be worth it to move to supported software and hardware for that amount?  Remember that the G5/G6 machines will only be supported through z/OS 1.5, which should be going out of service March 2007.  That is, you can keep them around for another three and a half years, but after that they'll be unsupported.  And who wants to be on a 3-year old software release?

    You might want to check with your local business partner or IBM representative to see if you qualify for this offering.

    2.  Cheryl Watson's TUNING Letter 2003, No. 3 

    The sixty-two page 2003, No. 3 TUNING Letter was emailed to electronic subscribers today (July 3).  The print issues will be mailed next week.  You can purchase a printed copy of the current TUNING Letter for $95 at http://www.watsonwalker.com.  The following highlights some of what you can find in our latest TUNING Letter.

    The biggest news in this issue is the newest zSeries machine, the z990.  At 450 MIPS per processor (and with up to 32 processors), this is the largest mainframe to date.  Our description of these new machines is on page 20.

    The LSPR performance ratings have significantly changed for the latest machines.  See page 23 for a better understanding of what this means and how it will affect you.

    Changes in software and pricing were also announced in March and May.  Our analysis of these important changes is on page 26.

    WebSphere is a hot topic these days.  Make sure to see our WebSphere update on page 9.

    SVC Dumps in CICS can cause severe performance problems.  See Bob Archambeault's recommendations for managing these CICS dumps (page 41).

    Dynamic ISPF is a handy tool for TSO users.  Read an update to an earlier article by Tom Conley on page 50.

    Our User Experiences section covers several topics of interest: CPU overhead due to SMS trace, a problem with page fixing above 16 MB and information on RACF's Erase on Scratch option.  One of the tips saved one site at least 75 minutes a day of processing time.  See page 35.

    The z990 introduced a new option called On/Off Capacity on Demand.  For an explanation of this and other capacity on demand options, please see page 29.

    Our Publications section on page 19 contains information about some new mainframe magazines.  The white papers from WSC are also excellent.
     

    Stay tuned!

    Cheryl Watson

    ======================================================

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