IBM Does A Little Power Systems Marketing After All
September 27, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
|
It’s been a full business week since IBM started shipping the four new entry Power Systems machines and the i Solution Edition variants of the boxes specifically tailored to IBM i customers to cut them a break, and now apparently a little marketing is going to begin in the midrange. Apropos of nothing last week, IBM put out a statement about the new entry machines with the requisite “we love the midrange” gushing. For instance, take this: “We continue to develop and deploy the powerful technologies that growing businesses need to improve efficiency, innovate and scale for future growth,” said Andy Monshaw, general manager of IBM global midmarket. “Across IBM, we are committed to helping our business partners and midsize clients find new and affordable solutions to address their business challenges and spark transformation.” The rest of the statement was mostly full of IBM buzzwords about reliability, scalability, performance, dynamic infrastructure, cloud, and virtualization. But there was this one interesting tidbit: “In July, IBM announced additional co-marketing funding and agency support for eligible IBM business partners to quickly launch end-to-end Power7 business development campaigns to build new pipeline targeted at midsize companies.” Last week, I also received some midrange-related marketing promotions from IBM, with the familiar Smarter Systems for a Smarter Planet theme and timed no doubt to coincide with the delivery of the Power 710, 720, 730, and 740 servers. Check it out:
I got a chuckle that my email client could not render IBM’s HTML correctly and referred to its last bullet points in its marketing message as “•” but maybe that’s just my sense of humor. The email that IBM sent me linked out to this Power Systems customer page, with seven Power Systems customers telling their stories. I didn’t have an hour to kill to find out if any of them were IBM i shops. As part of its midrange marketing scheme, IBM also launched a small and medium business center, which you can see here and which has IBM i for Power right at the top of the page. IBM is also promoting a new midrange information exchange called infoBOOM, which looks like a cross between a multi-writer blog and a LinkedIn business network. The main topics of discussion on the site are business analytics, data security and risk management, green business, information governance, social media for business leaders, and virtualization/cloud computing/SOA as one giant lump. Searching for “IBM i” on this site gets you precisely nowhere because it is technically the “IBM infoBOOM” site, and it brings up every reference to the site. This is why you give your operating system a proper name, people. RELATED STORIES IBM Gives Schools Discounts on Power Systems Iron Entry IBM i Server Deals Greased With License Discounts IBM Ducks i Pricing on Most Entry Power7 Servers IBM Allows i and 5250 Licenses to Jump Hardware Reader Feedback on Allowing IBM i and 5250 Licenses to Jump Hardware IBM Slashes 5250 Enablement Prices, Other Power Systems Tweaks IBM Officially Announces i/OS 7.1 IBM Holds i 6.1 Prices Steady, Slashes Application Server Fees
|
