Re: UltraSPARC versus AMD

[Ben <bench@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As someone who works in a nationwide bank, let me tell you why we 
choose IBM and Sun hardware: support. If we want to get a server for a 
project, we can't just go get the most cost-efficient thing out there 
for the job. We have a short list of servers that can be picked from, 
and that's it. A given server makes it onto that list if and only if it 
can be supported by a vendor in a matter of hours for at least 3 years. 
We don't always purchase that support, but bank policy says it has to 
be an option.

We don't generally purchase monster machines. Sure, there are some 
mainframes, but they are few and far between. Everything else doesn't 
really have anything more than 32 procs.

On Apr 23, 2005, at 2:58 AM, William Yu wrote:

> As for why financial/insurance institutions use IBMs or Suns -- I 
> would suggest limited choice is a bigger issue than any specific 
> sub-system performance factor. A nationwide bank doesn't have any 
> choice except to pick a monster 100+ processor machine because 
> anything slower couldn't handle their 20,000 employees. Not many 
> options really. Plus, people in big companies tend to make safe 
> decisions -- get the company with the most name value so you don't get 
> fired if the machine turns out to be a lemon.


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