The Accounting Problem That Can Make the Mainframe Appear More Expensive than Distributed Systems and Cloud.

The Mainframe has been around a long time, and as such it is an easy target.  Mainframes often get hit in the accounting books with the allocated costs of the data centers, networks, power & colling and IT staff.  

Distributed servers that are run in departments outside data centers  or even those run inside data centers sometimes do not get hit with allocated costs. 

This can be one reason why even when the number of MIPs being used decreases, the costs of the mainframe seem to increase.  It’s important for organizations to use equal accounting treatments, to understand the true costs of the mainframe and to be able to properly compare alternatives.