Microsoft has launched a new web site at http://www.wholoveswindows.com/websphere/ that highlights the results of a benchmark study they did on the costs of running the IBM Stock application on AIX and Windows Server 2008 and the equivalent .NET StockTrader application on Windows Server 2008. The results were very interesting. The .NET application came out on top as far as price and price/performance but I was surprised by the difference in cost and performance for the WebSphere applications.

Microsoft showed that the same WebSphere application running on commodity blade hardware cost about 66% less than on the mainframe and provides better performance. In these tough economic times that seems like a good way for IT departments to save some of their precious budget for new initiatives and expanding into new areas. Since it is WebSphere on both platforms there is no rewrite to port the application and the management and tuning should be very similar so I can see this being a huge win for IT shops.

Another surprising thing to me was the difference in the licensing costs for WebSphere on AIX and Windows. I would think they would be about the same but it appears the mainframe is much more expensive. If I were an IBM customer I would be questioning what the additional licensing costs buys me.

I will be attending an IBM conference next week and will see if I can find anyone who can answer that question.

Editors note: The original URL http://www.websphereloveswindows.com is no longer working. I have updated the article with the new URL http://www.wholoveswindows.com/websphere/ which is serving the same content.