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IBM Gives pSeries Rebates to Buyers of Specific AIX Applications

IBM wants customers who are buying popular server software packages that are supported on Unix to buy its pSeries-AIX machines, and that is why the company is giving hefty rebates to customers who buy pSeries 670 and pSeries 690 boxes with the intent of running specific applications on them that, not coincidentally, eat a lot of processing power.

Under a program called the Software Solutions for eServer pSeries 670 and 690 promotion, which expires on June 30, IBM is offering rebates (not discounts off the front end of a deal, but rebates after a deal is closed) that range from $15,000 on a pSeries 670 with eight 1.5 GHz Power4+ processors activated to $110,000 for a pSeries 690 with 32 of its 1.9 GHz Power4+ processors activated. To take part in the promotion, customers have to buy AIX-based software from the following vendors: Ariba, Cognos, i2, Lawson Software, Manugistics, Oracle (for its application suite, not its database), PeopleSoft, QAD, Retek, SAP, SAS Institute, SunGard SCT, Siebel Systems, and SSA-GT.

Sun Signs Up Rackable Systems as Solaris OEM Partner

Sun Microsystems is eager to get Solaris for X86 on as many machines as possible, whether or not they carry a Sun sticker. While Sun has a number of Solaris OEM partners, particularly in the embedded systems market where equipment makers use Sparc/Solaris or X86/Solaris to create specialty computers, none of the core server makers actually pre-install the software on general-purpose servers. That could change, now that John Loiacono is in charge of Sun's software division, and maybe an OEM agreement that Sun just signed with niche server maker Rackable Systems.

Rackable Systems, as its name suggests sells rack-mounted servers that use Intel Xeon and Itanium and AMD Opteron processors. The company's servers offer half-depth racks that pack both front and back and include sophisticated DC power distributors and airflow engineering that make machines run cooler and more efficiently than standard rack servers. Rackable Systems is only putting Solaris on Xeon and Opteron processors, since Sun does not officially support the Itanium chip. (That will change if Itanium takes off, trust us.)

Sun Targets Life Sciences with Clusters

Bioinformatics is one of the hot spots in IT today, and that is why Sun Microsystems, like other Unix server makers, are chasing this emerging market. With this market, you have to start out small, since a lot of life sciences companies are small and cash-starved. That is why Sun has created a baby 19-inch rack system called the Starter Cluster that holds four of its Xeon-based Sun Fire V60x and V65x servers running Linux or Solaris, open source Message Passing Interface (MPI) parallel clustering software, Sun's N1 Grid Engine grid software, and a bioinformatics visualization program called Vibe from Incogen all prebundled on the boxes. The Linux-on-Xeon version of the Starter Cluster is shipping now, and in the summer Sun will offer configurations supporting both Linux and Solaris on the Opteron-based Sun Fire V20z servers. Why Sun is not peddling Solaris or Linux on the V20z servers right now, both of which will run in 32-bit mode on the boxes, is a mystery. So is the fact that Sun is not supporting Solaris right now on Xeon versions of the cluster. The Starter Cluster will sell on the street for under $22,000, says Sun, and will be available from Sun and its resellers.

IBM Launches New Tivoli AIX Backup Software

IBM this week announced a new version of its SysBack AIX backup and recovery software, but put it out with the wrong name. The new software, which was called SysBack V5, was announced and then immediately withdrawn, then re-announced as Tivoli Storage Manager for System Backup and Recovery. Call it what you will, but the software, which is available through the Passport software sales channel used by IBM's Tivoli and Domino channels, is new and improved.

Tivoli SysBack 5.6 runs on AIX 4.3, 5.1, and 5.2 on RS/6000 and pSeries servers. The software backs up and restores files at the directory, filesystem, logical volume, volume group, or system level. The software costs $900, with discounts of up to 30 percent for more than 100 licenses. A version of the software that runs inside an AIX logical partition costs $3,000, however, with a 17 percent discount for customers installing it on six or more partitions.

Red Hat-SCO Suit Halted Until SCO-IBM Case Is Done

Unix vendor The SCO Group had been trying to get the lawsuit that commercial Linux distributor Red Hat brought against it last year dismissed. That suit, which in essence claims that the company was bad-mouthing Linux without proof that Linux contained illegal Unix source code, has not been dismissed, but the U.S. District Court in Delaware, which is hearing the case, has decided that it will halt the case until the $5 billion SCO-IBM case, which is set for trial in April 2005, is resolved. Meanwhile, in the federal district court in Utah, where the SCO-IBM case is being held, SCO has asked the judge if it can get an extension until September 2005 to give it more time to perform discovery. Both companies have been asked to get their acts together by April 19, when the court expects IBM to hand over AIX and Dynix Unix source code and a list of witnesses, while SCO is supposed to detail which pieces of Linux source code are derived or copied from Unix.

IBM Leads in Content Management Software

According to an analysis of the content management software market performed by WinterGreen Research, IBM is the leader in sales of content management software, with a 20 percent share of the market through the first three quarters of 2003. WinterGreen estimates that, for the full year, content management software will account for a total of $1 billion in sales across all vendors, and it forecasts that this market will grow to $2.1 billion by 2009. WinterGreen reckons that Documentum, acquired late last year by disk array maker EMC, was the number-two vendor in the content management software space, with 14 percent of the market in the first nine months of 2003, followed by Open Text with a 9 percent share. With no one vendor having a dominant position, it is still possible for a newcomer to enter the market, but both IBM and EMC have invested heavily in this space and intend to gain market share in the area. Microsoft certainly has aspirations in the CMS market, too, and has embraced the XML lingua franca that all of the other CMS players have adopted.

By the way, CMS software does more than manage HTML documents on a Web site, or at least enterprise-class CMS systems do. Increasingly, CMS programs have to manage XML documents, PDF documents, and various kinds of structured and unstructured data. One of the big drivers behind this market is having to comply with government reporting regulations, which force companies to archive information and communication over a long term.

IBM to Acquire Large Indian Outsourcing House

IBM is acquiring an Indian outsourcing company, it was announced last week. Daksh eServices is one of India's largest business process outsourcing (BPO) firms, with 6,000 employees spread across its four BPO facilities near its headquarters in Gurgaon, and one new BPO facility under construction in the Philippines.

Daksh, created in 1999, specializes in call centers and provides back-office transaction processing services to a variety of companies, including Amazon.com. This will be the first BPO acquisition for IBM in India, although IBM already employs 9,000 people at its Bangalore subsidiary, which provides BPO services. The financial terms of the acquisition, which is subject to Indian regulatory approvals and is expected to close in May, were not announced. Following the acquisition, Daksh employees and customers will be absorbed into IBM Business Consulting Services. This is not the first time the companies have worked together. In March, Daksh and IBM completed an installation of a PeopleSoft ERP package in just 20 weeks, which the companies said was a record. IBM Business Consulting Services performed the ERP implementation at Daksh facilities in India, the Philippines, England, and the United States.