Does Single Source produce the best system for Your Company?
Apple has had a superior desktop product for decades. But it costs too much because there is no competition. As a result Microsoft Windows comes in second place running on machines that have only recently become more stable like their counterparts.
Let’s be fair; Apple controls their hardware and OS. It has a smaller market share. It has less attacks because of the smaller market share. It should be more stable.
This example sets the stage for a larger question. Let’s talk about the glass house…the server room, the core systems that must be stable for our business to operate. Do we need the same economy there? Is it better to use open system software such as Linux running on a cluster of PCs? Or do we find we have better solutions running hardware/software combinations from large vendors?
Oracle has just released mind blowing performance numbers with their Sparc clusters with an astounding TCP-C benchmark of 30.2 million transactions per minute. It used a lot of hardware to get it done…but it’s pretty easy to tweak things to make them go when you own the hardware, operating system, and the software. A one stop shop at a premium price. But the hard thing to really calculate is the actual total cost of ownership (not going to get into that battle).
How about IBM along with their many hardware and software products as well as consulting services. At what point does it make sense to go with the big vendor as a one stop shop opposed to other options. Are they the better player in the cloud? IBM, HP and Sun have a much longer history of timeshare capabilities. Virtual machines, a fairly recent capability still maturing on the X86 platform, has been around for decades elsewhere.
At the end of the day…what has the best value for you? A system designed by a single vendor for all hardware and software, or multiple vendors working closely to provide a cohesive service? It may be a premium price up front; but what is that compared to downtime. With Cloud services, do the large vendors have a platform competing with new players in the Cloud? Can they become competitive enough to reach into the SMB market?
Share your opinions with us by sending your comments to btaylor@sswug.org.
A Note About the Cloud
Steve mentioned yesterday and published a well thought out SelecTViews presentation regarding concerns about the cloud. Be sure to follow up as we are starting to see more exploits of security vulnerabilities. If you’re not sure they can happen, even Oracle was hit with a breakin to the MySql.com site through a SQL Injection attack. Just because something is in the cloud doesn’t mean it’s safe.
Cheers,
Ben
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