IBM Offers Europe A Power Blade-To-Flex Migration Deal

March 17, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Resellers pushing new Flex System nodes to customers with BladeCenter blade server machines using Power-based nodes can get a deal from IBM to help cushion the blow migrating to Power-based Flex System nodes. The deal is being offered to resellers across Europe, but there is a bug in Big Blue’s announcement system and it is only showing up for resellers in Italy as we go to press. IBM is advertising this deal in websites and marketing campaigns, and resellers are supposed to pass the rebate down to the solution providers, who in turn pass it on to end user customers.

You might be asking yourself, why not just cut the price on the Flex System iron? Well, if IBM does that, it hurts its top line. But rebates only hurt the bottom line, and more importantly, there can be a 90-day lag between when the machine ships–and is therefore booked for revenue–and when the rebate check is cut–and therefore hits the bottom line.

This deal was put out for all of Europe in announcement letter ZA14-1128, but it comes up with a 404 page missing error at the moment. You can, however, see the shape of the deal in announcement letter ZA14-1127 for Italy.

Under the deal, the reseller gets to claim the rebate on behalf of downstream solution providers who are involved in Power blade-to-Flex node migrations. Then it gets passed downstream. The Power-based BladeCenter machinery has to be taken out of the account and returned within 90 days of the customer getting the Flex System iron. There is a limit of one rebate per Flex System server (whatever server means in this context is not clear) and for any deal with more than five “units” on a single transaction, solution providers have to get approval from IBM first. Based on the language in the announcement letter and the size of the rebate of €3,000, unit means a chassis plus one Power node and one Xeon node.

The machines that can be replaced under this deal include the BladeCenter H and S enclosures, the HS22 Xeon-based blades and the slew of Power-based blade servers, including the Power7-based PS701, PS702, PS703, and PS704 as well as the Power6-based JS12, JS22 and JS23 blades.

This deal was announced on March 14 but has been made retroactive to March 1 and will run out on June 30, which is the end of the second quarter for Big Blue.