First National Bank of Omaha throws Sun Out
Grifter writes " First National Bank of Omaha said this week that it's nearing completion of a complete changeout of its distributed server infrastructure for a mainframe and blade-server architecture based on Linux. While only 80% complete, the move is already expected to save the company $1.8 million this year in operating expenses and another $9.6 million through 2011." More proof that banks know how to save money.
Have you looked and any of the benchmarks lately for Unix based hardware? IBM is the fastest out there and has been for a while. Sun is one of the slowest platforms you can buy, and comparative pricewise to IBM. While Linux on Intel is pretty fast, and definitely the best bang for your buck, most banks are not betting on it yet. There is a lot that goes with that, like a lot of banking software does not run on Linux. Sun is no longer a competitor in the hardware arena, as much as it pains me to say it. Five years ago I was the biggest Sun biggot you could find. Now all of my clients only use Sun to beat up IBM on price, and they typically get a better price with IBM than Sun and much better performance. Don't underestimate IBM performance and pricing, it's not 1987. I price out multi-million dollar infrastructures for my banking clients every day of the week, and trust me, they are looking at cost/performance, not names. The new pSeries server rock in an unbelieveable fashion (and I don't work for them).
Yes, I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.