21st November 2014

IBM i costs significantly lower than rivals

3 year IT costs

IBM i 7.2 and Power Systems three-year IT costs are on ‘average 45% less than those of Microsoft Windows Server 2012 and SQL Server 2014, and 51% less than for x86 Linux servers and Oracle databases’ according to research published by International Technology Group.

Findings in ‘IBM I on Power Systems for Midsize Businesses: minimizing costs and risks for cloud, analytics and mobile environments’ are based on research conducted in 42 midsize businesses in the manufacturing, distribution and retail sectors (ranging from $300 million to $1.65 billion in revenue).

ITG included hardware, maintenance and software licenses; staff costs for systems and database administration; and the cost for facilities (including) energy.

Some of the lower costs for the IBM i can be attributed to the ability to have real-time workload management and more granular partitioning resulting in greater workload density. ITG also reported that people costs were significantly lower for the IBM i than for Windows and Linux servers.

“IBM i is the simplest, most automated, most tightly integrated operating system available today. It incorporates unique features such as an object-based architecture, integrated SQL database (DB2 for i), single-level storage and integrated workload management that minimize administrative overhead. Similarly, because of the tight integration of DB2 for i, the same individual can typically handle database as well as system administration; i.e., separate database administrators (DBAs) are not be required.”

Posted by Paul on 21st November 2014.