Cheryl, just thought I'd also let you know that I just, seconds ago, approved a purchase order for a sun box and related disk totalling 56,000.
See, I _can_ go both ways.
Although, even this example could have had a different outcome with very little effort. The application only needs the Sun box to run an ORACLE instance. My choices were:
- put ORACLE on Sun, thus keeping it consistant with the rest of the ORACLE implementations in the data centre
- put ORACLE on NT, thus cutting the hardware cost in half, but introducing another variable
- configure the app to use MS SQL Server on NT, which has the potential for dropping the database cost to 1/10th of the above, and the hardware in half.
I chose the first one for the following reasons:
a) staff already had experience with ORACLE / Sun combo
b) site already fully licensed for ORACLE, so I didn't have to absorb any DB cost. If I had to, the outcome would have definitely been different
c) most expedient thing to do
In this example MS SQL Server would have been a more than adequate DB platform; and NT more than adequate to meet the needs.
Oddly enough, an NT server is still required to run some processes that only run on an NT box, so I haven't economized on hardware at all.
Interestingly enough performance and reliabilty of either platform were not key deciding factors. One is overkill for the application; the other one is simply good enough. |
