An article by Adam Thornton originally published in Technical Support (December 2000) discusses Linux for System/390 for designing and deploying large-scale Internet service provider (ISP) and Internet data center (IDC) infrastructure solutions.
From the article:
This concluding article discusses the business case for a Linux on S/390 implementation. Historically, the justification for workstation and mini-computer class systems has been based solely on the discussion of acquisition price for the base hardware; only a few years ago a simple upgrade, such as a 64MB memory upgrade for a medium-range S/390 processor, could easily have cost more than $50,000 USD. Today, given IBM's efforts at reengineering the S/390 to use commodity parts without sacrificing the system's legendary reliability and self-management features, it is more difficult to justify the financial case for workstation-based computing vs. centralized large system computing. A more sophisticated analysis is necessary; one needs to consider not just the hardware, but also the cost of operating and maintaining the facilities and communications infrastructure required, the staffing required to deploy, maintain, and operate the environment, and the time required to deliver a solution to the marketplace.