Sun responds to IBM's incentive program

I wrote a blog article previously about IBM being upset about the Sun Oracle deal and throwing a bit of a tantrum. Sun apparently has some not so nice things to say about the innovation at IBM. From the article on Sun's website. "Industry experts frequently talk about the "Brick Wall" of Computing Performance. Well, everyone except IBM. Cranking the clock frequency to scale performance is an evolutionary dead-end; while Sun and the industry as a whole move forward with multi-core, multi-thread processors. IBM is the last holdout and is exhausting the old technique with higher power consumption and higher heat generation."

The article makes quite a few valid points and hits IBM where it really hurts. If you look at the slanted design of the racks for the IBM Blue Gene Supercomputer this was done to house additional air ducts for cooling. IBM is pushing for water cooled designs to further cool these really hot processors which is directly opposite of the industry's air cooled movement. Even Cray moved away from liquid Fluorinert cooling in their later designs.

Unlike IBM with their incentive paid in professional services "blue dollars" Sun is offering a 40% discount on hardware replacing IBM systems.

Rackable Rebranding as SGI

In an unexpected and strange move Rackable announced that they will be re branding their company as SGI. From their press release “The Rackable name will become the brand for the SGI x86 cluster compute products. Rackable will join our other industry-recognized brands – such as ICE Cube, Altix, InfiniteStorage, CloudRack, MicroSlice, Origin, and VUE – to comprise the new SGI.”

While this may be ancient history to most SGI had a line of x86 products that failed miserably. Systems like the SGI 320 workstation that used UMA technology and their full line of rack mounted servers that never sold well like the SGI 1200. SGI's original x86 servers had real engineering inside them and were not just re branded commodity systems and still did not sell. With cost a major factor in most data center build outs its really questionable if "brand name" really matters anymore. What most companies look for when selecting server hardware is price, performance and service rather than a pretty logo in their racks.

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds in the future. A brand represents much more than what can be purchased in a contract. It's a history of engineering and support. Customers can see through an SGI logo attached to an inferior product. Rackable has bought some really big shoes to fill. Hopefully their commitment is more than wanting pretty logo's for their products. That logo alone did not sell SGI's x86 systems. Hopefully Rackable is committed to the same levels of performance, innovation and engineering as SGI was.

IBM = Sore Loser?

IBM loses out on the Sun Microsystems deal and then gets angry because Sun went with a better offer from Oracle. But in typical red faced angry toddler fashion if they can't have their way they are going to take their ball and go home and not be Sun's friend anymore.

This article describes how IBM has doubled the incentive for customers to dump Sun hardware in favor of their hardware. "IBM will offer customers $8,000 worth of software or services for every Sun Sparc processor ditched in favor of IBM Power servers. IBM previously offered $4,000 per processor for customers that made the switch. " This sounds like a great deal but its limited to their already overinflated software and professional services. How about hardware for hardware? Oh thats right. Hardware costs money. I wonder how much of those professional services will be serviced out of Banglore India?

Just Last week IBM announced plans to parner with Brocade because they are angry about Cisco selling their Unified Computing System. Article here in case you missed out. Seems like a pattern is emerging here.

If Dr Watson was alive today I wonder what he would say? I have a feeling that he would not approve of this behavior.