The Four Hundred

Computer vendors do their spring cleaning at the end of the year, not at the beginning. Two weeks ago, IBM killed off a high availability promotion on the iSeries platform that gave customers big rebates if they bought a new iSeries for high availability clustering. Last week, IBM killed off a bunch of so-called "Bumblebee" iSeries promotions that offered customers discounts on iSeries machine equipped with specific middleware or applications.

While these promotions generated lots of press for IBM in 2002--and might even have generated sales--they were not very likely to stimulate more demand in the final weeks of the year. So IBM nixed them. The killing of these deals may mean that IBM is getting ready for a new approach to iSeries co-marketing with its own Software Group and with outside software companies, or it might mean that IBM just wanted to keep the focus on the Green Streak deals as the year comes to a close.

The first dead deal is the IBM eServer iSeries for Linux Rebate, announced March 26, which offered customers who bought an iSeries Model 820 and a Linux operating system from SuSE, Red Hat, or Turbolinux rebates of $11,600, $27,200, or $40,000, depending on the specific configuration.

The second dead deal is the IBM eServer iSeries for IBS Rebate, which offered rebates of $6,400 or $11,000 on two different Model 270 configurations that also had ERP software from International Business Systems installed on the machines. This deal was originally announced on February 26.

The third dead deal is the IBM eServer iSeries for Intentia Rebate, announced January 15. This rebate provided $3,800 or $6,400 in cash back to IT organizations that bought specific configurations of the Model 270 server with Intentia's ERP suite installed on them.

The termination terms for these three rebate promotions require customers who are in the middle of a deal to accept shipment of their machines by December 31, which means IBM can book the sales in the fourth quarter.

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