Big Blue Cuts Deals On Entry Power Systems Iron
March 9, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan
With no new Power processors on the immediate horizon, except a kicker Power9’ that is aimed at supercomputer systems providing a testbed for future high bandwidth main memory technology that will debut with the Power10 chips in 2021, IBM has to do something to try to move some iron. Price cuts are always a good incentive.
And so, we see in announcement letter ZAEP0091B, which was quietly updated on March 5, when it came to our attention, after being announced on January 24, when we did not see in the IBM online announcement feed (because it wasn’t there, not because we need new glasses), IBM is giving end user rebates on entry Power9 machines to help cushion the blow when they are moving from older Power7, Power7+, and Power8 iron or from even older AS/400, iSeries, pSeries, System i, System p, or RS/6000 servers or buying a new Power9 machine for the first time. There is a separate announcement letter ZAEP0091A that gives the same deal to customers, and we cannot see what the difference is in the two deals. They look identical to us, and we are just bringing them both up so you know about it.
The rebates are as follows:
- Power Systems S914, 4 Core: $1,500
- Power Systems S914, 6/8 Core: $2,000
- Power Systems S922: $1,500
- Power Systems S924: $3,000
- Power Systems AC922: $2,000
This rebate deal is effective as of January 24 and runs out on June 30. At the moment, it is only available in Europe and the island territories of European nations; we do not see it available in the United States, Canada, Japan, or other countries in Asia. This seems wrong, first of all. There is nothing special about Europe and its former colonies as far as we are concerned and the deal should be available worldwide.
Moreover, considering the cost of some of these systems, it seems that these rebates will not really help compel customers who are thinking about buying new Power9 machines to move faster or buy bigger systems for the same money. We think IBM is going to have to do better than a couple of truck payments worth of rebate to stimulate demand and get Power Systems revenues growing again. We would love to know how many machines are using Power6 through Power7+ iron and would love to see some special deals that really get these customers to move ahead. Time is a-wasting.
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