Amdahl Corporation last Friday issued a belated response to IBM September introduction of a Growth Opportunity Licencing Charge (GOLC). The Sunnyvale, California plug-compatible mainframe (PCM) vendor said it has taken this long to clarify the rules under which the cut-price software for small users scheme works.
Amdahl’s Omniprise answer to the IBM Multiprise 3000 series of standalone low-end mainframes, has been only sketchily described, because IBM won’t permit its PCM competitor to go into greater detail, claims Peter Challis, an OS/390 consultant with Amdahl Ltd in the UK. All Amdahl can say is that three models in its Omniprise range, the 1015, 1025 and 1035, are roughly equivalent to IBM’s 3000 series models, the only clear difference being that Amdahl’s family is capable of being dynamically upgraded, while IBM’s is not.
In the case of both companies, the GOLC strategy is designed to give smaller mainframe users a chance either to implement a new application, or expand an existing one, without being stung by higher software charges. Under GOLC rules, said Challis, the user enjoys software pricing that is roughly two-thirds the cost of conventional S/390 charging scales, but the scheme can only be exploited on the designated IBM Multiprise and Amdahl Omniprise boxes. These are low end machines (thought to top out at around the 200 MIPS mark), and users are forbidden from implementing them as part of a parallel Sysplex cluster, although they can by part of a shared DASD configuration.
For smaller companies who, for example, want to run a modest e-commerce site against OS/390, the GOLC approach has much to recommend it, and there is some limited room for growth. But it is not likely to pull in non-mainframe users. Instead, its chief benefit, from the perspective of IBM and Amdahl, is that it adds another argument for convincing would-be Unix migrants to stay with OS/390 just a little longer.
