A standard IBM "gotcha" is to offer deep discounts and charge the 20% p.a. maint cost on the list price - e.g. "We'll give you this hardware for $1." then a year later "So sorry the maint is 3 x $250k x 0.2 = $150k p.a.".
Another is that the software and hardware designed to turn a baby system into anything useful is astonishingly expensive to people not used to dealing with this end of the market. Enjoy finding that your hypervisor is licensed at 5 figures per core, and that your cores are six figures a pop.
Re:IBM introduces z15 mainframe
by StrangeDoctor on Sunday September 15, 2019 @05:16PM
(#20979527)
It’s the support contract that’s the real cost.
At one point, IBM was selling base-level mainframes for $75,000 (see https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/ibm-u...)
It is true though that a 'realistic' configuration is likely to cost north of $1 million, and that none of these numbers include the price of the software.