There's more to the IBM i cost of operation reports from ITG. Last year we highlighted the research company's study that showed how much more cost-effective it is to run IBM i in midsize businesses instead of Windows or x86 Linux with Oracle. This year, we'll turn our attention to enterprise-class companies.
In "IBM i for Enterprise Businesses: Quantifying the Value of Resilience," ITG shows two sets of three-year cost comparisons for use of IBM i, Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clusters (WSFC), and Oracle Exadata Database Machine to support core enterprise systems in six companies.
The companies, with revenues ranging from $1 billion to $10 billion, used these solutions for operating supply chains and for financial services.
More specifically, the comparisons are based on IBM i 7.1 with IBM PowerHA SystemMirror for i high availability clusters on the latest-generation of IBM Power Systems; Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 R2 and WSFC on the latest-generation Intel E5- and E7-based platforms; and current Oracle Exadata models with Oracle 11g Database including Real Application Clusters (RAC).
Highlights of Running IBM i for Enterprises
When ITG calculated the cost of downtime due to outages, the business costs due to said outages averaged 90 percent less for use of IBM i than for Windows server clusters, ITG reports, and 71 percent less than for Oracle Exadata. This calculation is for planned outages and unplanned outages of less than three hours duration. In addition, the lower IBM i costs of downtime translated into three-year business savings of $2.8 million to $35.3 million compared to use of clustered Windows servers, and $700,000 to $8.6 million compared to use of Oracle Exadata.
And what about severe unplanned outages?
ITG reports that the risk exposure of unplanned outages of 6 to 24 hours is also lower with IBM i. ITG calculated that the risk for IBM i usage in such a scenario is, on average, 93 percent less than for use of clustered Windows servers and 73 percent less than for use of Oracle Exadata. These variances translated into $257,000 to $7.43 million in higher risk exposure for use of clustered Windows servers and $56,000 to $1.69 million for use of Oracle Exadata.
