BEA and Sun drive down total cost of web IT infrastructure?

Applications infrastructure software company BEA Systems and Sun Microsystems are claiming that the combination of their products and services for building e-business systems can offer businesses reduced total cost of ownership – specifically compared to IBM. The claim is founded on results of independent analysis by Los Altos consultancy Crimson Consulting Group which looked at three different e-business scenarios and concluded that the IBM software and hardware route could be up to 2.4 times higher in total cost than a comparable BEA and Sun solution. Crimson says the combination of BEA WebLogic software and Sun hardware consistently provided a total cost of ownership (TCO) advantage compared to IBM’s alternative – WebSphere software and hardware. The greatest differential arose from modelling a CRM application run across three computing data centres, requiring high performance throughput and 100% availability. In this case the IBM TCO was $32.1 million more than BEA/Sun. There will, of course, be plenty of other scenarios where the reverse is likely to be the case. Nevertheless, BEA and Sun point out that understanding the implications of the major TCO components (labour, maintenance and support, and software and hardware) is critical to helping businesses assess real IT budgets. They note that across Fortune 1000 businesses, for example, an average of 48 applications and 14 databases are deployed – and that businesses rely on their application platforms for years. The Sun and BEA alliance helps expedite and simplify e-business computing, as well as eliminate risk, they say. Latest from BEA Systems, launched at its BEA eWorld conference last month, is its WebLogic 7.0 Enterprise Platform, offering a unified application infrastructure platform covering portal functionality; integration; operations, administration, and management; security; and system development and deployment.