IBM Offers Linux Implementation Services Across All Systems

Published: November 28, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

If you want to put Linux on an IBM server--no matter what Big Blue brand you are talking about--and you don't want to be hassled by setting it up on the box, then IBM has a bunch of services for you.

IBM has announced three services for Linux, and they join a growing portfolio of services that Big Blue has "productized" over the past few months to make the consumption of services more like the consumption of hardware and software. Implementation Services for Linux Distributions brings one of IBM's 7,000 Linux experts into your shop to put a commercial Linux distribution on your machines and set it up to do what you want it to do. As part of this service, IBM will also show you how to set up software on other hardware. IBM's System i, System p, System x, BladeCenter, and System z servers can all be part of this service offering. IBM is prepared to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on your gear.

The Implementation Services for Linux Server Consolidation helps customers to do what a lot of the IBM press releases say they should do: migrate applications to Linux and consolidate them onto virtualized server instances. And finally, if you want to build a parallel Linux cluster to run supercomputing, data warehousing, and similar workloads, then the Implementation Services for Linux High Performance Computing Clusters is for you. This latter offering is only available on System x and BladeCenter servers, however. So if you want to build a Linux supercomputer cluster on Power iron, IBM does not have a shrink-wrapped services offering for you.

What IBM did not publish in its announcement letter or in its press releases for these productized services was a list price. However, a source at IBM did give us the starting prices for the services. The starting price for having IBM set up your Linux distributions is $10,000, while the starting price for the Linux server consolidation service is $100,000. Services for HPC setups start at $100,000 as well. As I explained to the IBMer I was speaking to, these are not prices; they are floors. This price is akin to me saying that apartments in New York, starting at $250,000. You have no idea how high the price ceiling is, or what you get for the money.

If IBM wants to productize a service, it has to set actual prices for the components of the service. It has to make the price configurable to deal with the basic variables of the situation--just like when IBM sells a server online. Here's the base service for one server for $Z. Now, add 10 virtual servers for $Y a pop. And now, consolidate 10 physical servers onto 10 virtual ones for $X each. And so forth. IBM has the idea half right. Which is better than last year. Now, it is time to make a service no different than a piece of hardware with different processor, memory, disk, I/O, and power options.