IBM Tweaks European Power Systems Trade-In Deal

December 2, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Back in February, IBM cooked up a trade-in rebate deal for Power Systems customers that gave them cash if they moved to a new machine and turned in an old one. That deal has been extended and tweaked several times as the year progressed–six times to be precise–after an update on November 21.

In announcement letter ENUSZA13-1003, IBM made it possible to upgrade some installed Power7-based systems to Power7+ machines as part of the deal. The deal was tweaked back in April so only Power7+ buyers could get the rebates, dropping Power7 machines from the list of eligible machines to be acquired.

Now, as you can see from the chart accompanying this announcement, the Power 710 (8231-E2B), Power 720 (8202-E4B), Power 730 (8231-E2B), and Power 740 (8205-E6B) can be replaced with shiny new Power7+ iron under the deal. Any old machine dating back to the original Power1, Power2, and Power3 chips in the RS/6000 line and all the way back to the AS/400e and iSeries based on the old “Star” series of PowerPC-AS processors can also be traded in.

The trade-in gives a rebate that varies depending on the size of the machine you buy. The low is $1,500 on a Power 720+ machine with four cores, and it rises to $2,500 on a Power 720+ machine or a Power 730+ machine with six or eight cores. You get $3,500 if you buy a Power 740+ server, and $5,000 if you acquire 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.