IBM Extends Power Systems Trade-In Deal In Europe

April 8, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

With new machines out the door for entry and midrange Power Systems customers and the economy not doing so great in parts of Europe, I would have expected to see more wheeling and dealing for the Power7+ machines to get customers buying.

Rather than come up with a new deal, Big Blue has instead just extended and slightly tweaked an existing trade-in rebate deal for customers moving from old Power-based systems to new Power7+ machinery. In announcement letter ENUSZA13-1003, which was updated on April 4, IBM dropped the Power7 models that were on the eligible list and now, through the extension of the rebate deal through June 30, you have to buy a new Power7+ server to get the rebate. IBM has also cut back the number of rebates you can claim per deal from 10 (if you are replacing 10 old machines with one new one) to five.

Under this trade in deal, if you have and IBM i or AIX machine with any Power processor up to the Power6 machine–all the way back to the original PowerPC boxes made in Rochester in the mid-1990s or earlier scientific Power2 and Power3 machines from Austin–you can trade I tin and you can get a rebate that ranges from a low of $1,500 on Power 720+ machines with four cores, $2,500 on Power 720+ machines with six or eight cores or on a Power 730+ system, $3,500 on a Power 740+ server, and $5,000 on a Power 750+ server. A rebate of $1,500 is available on the PowerLinux 7R1 (single socket) and 7R2 (two socket) servers as well, but in this case, the PowerLinux box has to be replacing a non-IBM server.

As far as I can tell, a similar rebate deal that was being offered in the United States since it was last tweaked in December has not been updated yet for the Power7+ entry and machines announced on February 5. But I expect that such a thing will happen soon.