RE: London Stock Exchange slowing moving to Windows

From: Main, Kerry (kerry.main_at_hp.com)
Date: 02/25/05 

Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 10:04:14 -0500

> -----Original Message-----
> From: johnhreinhardt@yahoo.com [mailto:johnhreinhardt@yahoo.com]
> Sent: February 23, 2005 10:54 PM
> To: Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com
> Subject: Re: London Stock Exchange slowing moving to Windows
>
>
> John Smith wrote:
> > johnhreinhardt@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > rob kas wrote:
> > >> http://www.vnunet.com/news/1161471
> > >
> > > "'The .Net framework really adds a lot of productivity benefits to
> the
> > > developers, and we've seen it already. Instead of
> mid-size projects
> > > costing £1m to £2m and taking nine to 12 months, the quotes I'm
> now
> > > getting are hundreds of thousands of pounds, taking three to six
> > > months to do."
> > >
> > > Is he really comparing the time and cost of completed projects
> againt
> > > estimates quoted by developers???? What planet is he from?
> >
> >
> > Lots of projects in the financial world start at those pricetags and
> more.
> > I've been involved in plenty @ $5MM and up.
> >
>
> I wasn't questioning the pricetag, I was having a hard time believing
> that this guy was taking "quotes" from developers on how long and how
> much they think a project will take at face value. I'ts been my
> experience that often they are woefully optimistic.
>
>
And 99 times out of a 100 these cost quotes do not include:
- Operations costs associated with moving to new environment e.g. Virus utilities, backup, batch, defrag, system monitoring and so on .. In the case of Windows all additional costs since prod versions these are not provided by the OS.
- training of Operations staff to new technologies. And before anyone says "just get new staff", think about separation packages for staff that have been there 10-15-20 years (and in Europe these are huge pkgs)
- cost of interface packages required to link in external vendors

When I hear some Customers talk about switching platforms because app development is "perceived" to be quicker (remember they have no mission critical record where they proved this yet), but do not discuss these other costs, I have to wonder "where have all the IT Leaders of the past gone?"

OTOH, personal opinion, but I have to smile sometimes at things like this as it is sometimes like talking to teenagers - you try to give them the benefit of your experience, but they just have to try it themselves before they believe it.

Ah well, should make for interesting press when they do go live.

:-)

Regards

Kerry Main
Senior Consultant
HP Services Canada
Voice: 613-592-4660
Fax: 613-591-4477
kerryDOTmainAThpDOTcom
(remove the DOT's and AT)

"OpenVMS has always had integrity ..
Now, Integrity has OpenVMS .."