IBM Taking Aim At HP and Oracle with Lower Cost Power PC Based Servers
IBM on Tuesday announced that the way it's going to compete with Hewlett-Packard and Oracle in the server space is by offering lower priced and easy-to-configure solutions for small-to-medium size businesses (SMBs). Towards that end, IBM rolled out eight new servers powered by its latest Power 7+ processor, starting with an entry-level model that costs less than $6,000, along with new PureSystems for big data and cloud-storage chores.
"Big data and cloud systems that were once only affordable to large enterprises are now available to the masses," said Rod Adkins, Senior Vice President, IBM Systems & Technology Group. "With these new systems, IBM is forging an aggressive expansion of its Power and Storage Systems business into SMB and growth markets."
Not only are the new systems cheaper and comparable in price to equivalent x86 solutions, they're also easy to deploy and don't require specialized skills, opening the door to SMBs that have struggled to adopt big data and private cloud solutions because of an inability to maintain such setups.
With pricing now roughly in line with x86 solutions, IBM points out that it's Power processors are better suited for big data and cloud because embedded memory and virtualization are built into the processor. And compared to older models, the new Power 7+ parts offer 2.5 times more cache memory and up to a 20 percent boost in clockspeed.
"Big data and cloud systems that were once only affordable to large enterprises are now available to the masses," said Rod Adkins, Senior Vice President, IBM Systems & Technology Group. "With these new systems, IBM is forging an aggressive expansion of its Power and Storage Systems business into SMB and growth markets."
Not only are the new systems cheaper and comparable in price to equivalent x86 solutions, they're also easy to deploy and don't require specialized skills, opening the door to SMBs that have struggled to adopt big data and private cloud solutions because of an inability to maintain such setups.
With pricing now roughly in line with x86 solutions, IBM points out that it's Power processors are better suited for big data and cloud because embedded memory and virtualization are built into the processor. And compared to older models, the new Power 7+ parts offer 2.5 times more cache memory and up to a 20 percent boost in clockspeed.
