More Details On That PS702 Blade Deal For MSPs

April 15, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Last week, I told you that IBM was giving managed service providers the special utility-priced licenses for IBM i 6.1 and AIX 6.1, similar to the per-core pricing it announced for IBM i 7.1 and AIX 7.1 last October. IBM also mentioned last week that it was adding the PS702 blade server was being added to a discount program for MSPs, but didn’t say what the terms of the deals were.

In announcement letter 313-030. IBM clarified the situation on the minimum amount of dough that MSPs have to blow on PS702 blades and what their discount will be. Here is how all of the machines available under the Managed Service Provider Utility Pricing offering stack up with this latest tweak:

PS702 blade server (7891-71Y) with minimum single unit purchase price of $25,000–55 percent discount
PS703 blade server (7891-73X) with minimum single unit purchase price of $30,000–55 percent discount
Power 720 rack/tower server (8202-E4C) with minimum single unit purchase price of $40,000–55 percent discount
Power 740 rack/tower server (8205-E6C) with minimum single unit purchase price of $55,000–55 percent discount
Power 770 rack server (9117-MMC) with minimum single unit purchase price of $210,000–65 percent discount
Power 770+ rack server (9117-MMD) with minimum single unit purchase price of $210,000–65 percent discount

IBM is also giving MSPs a 60 percent discount off IBM i, AIX, and PowerVM licenses under this deal, as well as for three-year Software Maintenance contracts for that systems software. This goes a long way toward cushioning the capital expenses blow of setting up infrastructure clouds based on Power Systems.

Pity IBM didn’t do it several years ago, like in 2006 when Amazon Web Services launched. But, good behavior should be rewarded, and at least now Big Blue is doing something, and it is a pretty dramatic set of discounts any way you want to cut it.