Users 'slam' vendors for not helping to control mainframe processor consumption

Published 13th January 2009

Many customers doubt whether mainframe vendors really want to help at all...

Crawley, UK - 13 January, 2009 - 89 per cent of UK mainframe users want mainframe vendors to do more to help customers control the growth in the rate at which their systems consume processing power, measured in MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second), according to new research from performance management expert Macro 4.

Users are forced to ‘shell out’ millions of pounds a year to vendors for CPU upgrades in a bid to keep pace with rising MIPS consumption. This may explain why a significant number - 39 per cent of those polled by Macro 4 - feel it actually may not be in vendors’ best interests to help reduce MIPS usage at all.

“Without these upgrades, users risk not having the processing capacity to allow their mainframe business operations to run efficiently. So many customers feel they have no choice but to spend the money. And they are a big part of the vendors’ revenue stream,” said Chris Limberger, Product Manager - Application Performance for Macro 4, which interviewed 97 UK mainframe users.

73 per cent of those polled said annual CPU upgrades are a significant cost to their business and the drive to identify IT budget savings in the tougher economic climate means that 84 per cent want to find ways to use less mainframe processing power.

The bad news for users is that IT industry analysts estimate that most large mainframe users can expect their systems’ consumption of processing power to increase by 15-20 per cent annually¹, measured in MIPS.

“Each additional MIPS typically costs around £2,500 in hardware and software charges. So if a company running a 10,000 MIPS system increases capacity by as little as ten per cent per annum, the incremental cost will be in the region of £2.5 million. That’s pretty typical but if your business is growing and if you’re upping the level of activity on your mainframe, you can expect much more,” said Limberger.

“We come across many large organisations that are paying millions of pounds extra every year due to increasing MIPS consumption,” he added.

Even in the most stable IT environments MIPS consumption gradually increases over time due to small changes to applications, environments and databases. And the negative effects of these essentially minor alterations in programming code can be multiplied as database size and transaction volumes grow.

One of the answers to controlling MIPS growth is to use application tuning and performance management techniques to correct these inefficiencies. This can speed up transactional throughput and reduce application response times. The same workload can be handled using less processing power, so companies need fewer MIPS.

“Application tuning and performance management is a bit like regularly fine tuning your car engine to ensure it runs as smoothly and effectively as possible. In our experience even the most well-run IT operations can make CPU savings of around 10 per cent per annum. It can enable you to defer that planned capacity upgrade whilst simultaneously improving service levels. That’s why so many mainframe users are turning to it as they try to cut costs in the current climate,” said Limberger.