IBM Offers Sun, HP Shops Generous Leases--What About iSeries Shops?

Published: September 27, 2010

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Not to sound like a broken record or anything, but how come IBM is always giving shops using Unix gear from rivals Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, and Fujitsu a good deal? How come Big Blue takes a long time to get around to giving a similar deal to its own iSeries shops, if at all? Don't they need a little financial help as encouragement to move up to more modern Power Systems machines, too?

Here's the deal, which doesn't exactly apply to you unless you can do a whole lot of sweet-talking with your IBM sales rep or business partner. This deal is not in an announcement letter, as far as I know, but is up on IBM's Global Financing site here.

First, you need to participate in the Power Systems Trade-In Program, the details of which you can see here, which does cover customers moving from vintage AS/400s and iSeries to Power Systems, giving customers a trade-in credit good toward the purchase of other products and services from IBM. If you buy a new Power 520, 550, 560, or 750 server (and presumably a new entry Power 720 or 740 machine if you are an IBM i enthusiast), you get a $12,000 credit; if you buy a Power 570, 770, or 780, you can get a $40,000 credit; and if you get a Power 595 (and presumably now a Power 795, but the deal doesn't say that), you can get up to a $240,000 credit. This is not a new deal, but one that has been here, off and on, for years and that was last updated back in June to add Power7-based systems to the mix as machines customers could buy to replace old gear.

Here's the new bit, and IBM i shops are not in the mix. If you do the trade-in from Oracle or HP Unix iron to a Power 770, 780, or 795 machine, Global Services will be happy to help you push the cost out into the 2011 budget by giving you a 36-month fair market value lease if you finance more than $75,000 of stuff (it is hard to imagine how you could spend anything less than many times that given these machines). If you get the financing done and the machine installed before the end of September, you can get a 120-day, interest-free deferral on lease payments. Considering that IBM first told Unix customers about this deal on September 10, this seems a bit tight, but IBM is trying to pump up the third quarter Power Systems sales and the quarter ends in September. For leasing deals done on October 1 or later, IBM is offering a 90-day, interest-free deferral for lease payments.

If you have anything running Power6 or earlier technology running i5/OS or anything earlier, you can and should argue that you should get the same exact financing. Just tell IBM to pretend you were a disgruntled OS/400 or i5/OS shop that moved to HP-UX or Solaris and that you want to come back into the fold.

And while I am at it, such generous leasing terms should apply to any Power Systems machine based on Power7 processors.

For heaven's sake, what on earth is wrong with IBM that they cannot cut the IBM i customer a break?

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