IBM has announced several enhancements to its IBM Power Rewards migration program, including a four-fold increase in reward points for customers moving workloads from Sun SPARC, UltraSPARC or SPARC64 processor-based servers, from either Sun or Fujitsu, to IBM Power Systems.
The IBM Power Rewards (1) program, similar to a frequent flyer incentive, offers reward points to competitively-installed customers, based on the number of HP, Sun or other cores retired when moving to Power Systems. Customers can redeem points toward no-charge migration services to move from HP-UX or Sun Solaris to AIX or Linux operating environments. IBM claims the top spot among UNIX vendors in market share, according to IDC's August Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker.
As part of the announced Power Rewards enhancements, IBM has increased the value per core for Sun or Fujitsu servers based on SPARC, UltraSPARC, or SPARC64 processors from 1,000 points to 4,000 points per core, making each core of a SPARC processor redeemable for up to $4,000 worth of no-charge IBM migration services. Sun recently announced end-of-life for all SPARC-IV products.
With Power Rewards, customers can turn in multiple servers--all with multiple cores--to build up considerable free migration points. As an example, a customer who moves the workload from one Sun V890 server could earn up to 64,000 points, worth up to $64,000, and a customer who replaces a 256-core Sun M9000 server could earn up to 1,024,000 points, worth more than $1 million in free services.
Customers Migrate to IBM
"IBM is already the world leader in UNIX servers and we see tremendous opportunity through competitive migrations to gain share," said Scott Handy, vice president of worldwide marketing and business strategy, IBM Power Systems. "We see more opportunity to move clients to IBM systems based on the strength of our products, It's no surprise that over the last few years, nearly 1,200 customers have already chosen to migrate to IBM from HP, Sun, and other competitive systems, including more than 500 from Sun alone."
Sun customers are not the only ones who can benefit from Power Rewards. IBM is also giving HP PA-RISC-based Superdome customers a highly attractive alternative to HP's long-delayed Itanium roadmap. IBM is offering quadruple the Power Rewards points for PA-RISC-based system migrations--or 4,000 per core--to help those customers easily justify the migration to IBM. IBM also offers 1,000 points per core for HP Alpha and Itanium technology-based systems, and SGI MIPS migrations.
A wide range of additional discounts on hardware, software or services is available and a reward points table is published for accumulating and redeeming Power Rewards.
IBM Global Technology Services offers a full complement of asset-based, standardized services for Power Systems, ranging from implementation to availability, virtualization and support, along with energy efficiency and security assessments, which allow clients to maximize their investment in IBM Power servers and software.
About IBM
For more information about IBM Power Systems, visit http://www.ibm.com/power.
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1. IBM Power Rewards offers 4,000 points per core for PA-RISC and Sun or Fujitsu SPARC, UltraSPARC, and SPARC64 system migrations and 1,000 points per core for systems based on Itanium, Alpha or Mips up to a maximum determined by the type and price of the qualifying Power Systems purchased as the target of the migration. Each 15,000 points can be redeemed for 40 hours of IBM migration services from IBM or a qualified IBM Business Partner. Points can also be applied to PowerCare services and other qualifying IBM offerings as outlined here: www.ibm.com/systems/migratetoibm/systems/power/rewards.html.
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