I think that a good line of approach would be something like... "It's all very well to declare the capabilities of the IBM AS400 with grand numbers and capabilities. For sure I could just as easily recite outstanding performance figures for the HP3000 together with how big and how fast the machine can go. It's unlikely that we can show either machine to be a slow dinosaur. However, there are issues here far more important than debating these numbers... 1. Suitability of Application to the Business needs. How adaptable is the manufacturing application to changing business requirements. You can then state how configurable ASK is etc. 2. Show a 5 year cost of ownership. Include figures for Power consumption, Air Conditioning requirements, Support contracts, training of Computer staff, number of computer staff needed to run machine. Include costs for user training to use ASK. Try to cover everything - do a thorough job. 3. Ease and cost of upgrading hardware and software. Show the cost of adding another 4Gb disk space, 512Mb memory etc. Cost of engineer to fit these. 4. Try to describe some of the tools available for putting on the front of ASK to enable a windows interface (Safari?) to show that the HP3000 is not just a dumb terminal server, but that it is a machine with a future. Using this more intelligent approach rather than the 'throwing of stones' approach which seems to be being used by your counterpart will show you in a better light. Because you would be recognising the importance of the business issues here, you would hope that management will pay more credence to your views. With reference to some other mails on the list, are you a Cognos site? As an aside, in my experience most ASK sites are also Cognos Powerhouse sites (one reason being the prevalence of REAL data types in ASK). If you are using this, find out the cost of user licensing for a larger machine before making too many statements to management - because the cost could be big. However, I'm sure if you speak to the Cognos rep and explain the situation - that unless they can do a good deal on a new license, they will lose the business because your company will be ditching the HP3000 - that should encourage them to do a deal. Many thanks David -----Original Message----- From: Kim Williams [SMTP:[log in to unmask]] Sent: 24 September 1998 18:40 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re[2]: Information on HP vs IBM * Please Note : This message was received from the Internet * _____________________________________________________________ Joe, We run ASK on a 937LX with a 22Gb hard drive and 480 Mb of memory. We do about 1500 invoice lines a month, the other company does about twice as many (and we both do all the manufacturing associated with the invoicing). Our system with just us on it is fine but I know we would have to upgrade to triple the volume of transactions. Here is the email I received (in part) about the godlike capabilities of the AS400: "... has 40 GB of disk and 512 MB of memory. It can support up to 1024 MB of memory, 996.4 GM of disk, 2400 workstations, 96 communication lines and 8 LAN ports. It is at the BOTTOM of the current AS400 systems available. We can grow from single processors to 12 way processors. The summary comparisons I know of today speak to the ease of hardware and software upgrades on the AS400, and the independence of OS/400 operating system from it's underlying hardware. The AS400 has a superior DB2 relational database with a single database management system, no Oracle, no Informix, no KSAM, no Sybase, allowing for third party packages to more easily join the data. This provides the ability to choose "Best of Class" software when needed instead of relying on a single software solution." I'm not trying to cut this guy down. He probably has a warm fuzzy feeling about the system he has worked with his whole career and is probably feeling very threatened right now since initially we were winning. Can someone tell me the lowest HP that most closely meets the above criteria? Or maybe give me a nicely worded response? Kim Williams [log in to unmask] BTW, I subscribe in digest so I apologize for any delays in response. ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: RE: Information on HP vs IBM Author: Joe Geiser <[log in to unmask]> at internet Date: 9/24/98 12:03 PM Kim, > Thanks for the responses. I was really hoping for > "benchmarks" (there's > that topic again). The company we recently consolidated with > is convinced > that our HP can't handle their volume of transactions. What kind of volume are we talking about here? What model 3000 are you running? Memory? Disk? This kind of information would be able to shed some light on the issue. > If it were simply cost of ownership we would win hands down. They pay > $100,000 per month for their AS400! You can get one hell of an upgrade for 100K, and a lot less too! Best Regards, Joe ========================================================== Joe Geiser, Senior Partner, CSI Business Solutions, LLC ** Your Client-Server and Internetworking Specialists ** Phone: +1 (215) 945.8100 Fax: +1 (215) 943.8408 *New* Toll-Free (US/Canada): (877) 945-8100 http://www.csillc.com mailto:[log in to unmask] ========================================================== HP Channel Partner Allaire Alliance Partner Microsoft ClubWin - Team One __________________________________________________________________ Confidentiality Notice This message may contain privileged and confidential information. 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