New boxes and prices
The company has launched two new iSeries boxes, the i800 and i810, for small-to-medium businesses, and replaced a horrifically complex set of enterprise machines with three -- the i825, i840 and an improved version of the i890. Each one is an iSeries version of one of IBM's pSeries Unix systems -- the two ranges have had common hardware for several years.
The price shake-up has a basic goal: hardware price equality with the pSeries, which is itself very competitive with other RISC Unix platforms. Perhaps the most exciting price change for iSeries users is the dumping of the much-hated "interactive features" pricing structure, whereby users had to pay extra according to how much terminal-based transactional work they were doing on the system. Now, each box comes with a flat price.
"Customers pay one fair price," said Jarman. "It will be simpler and cheaper for big enterprises."
"In the past, this platform has been price-per-bit rather high at its initial price, but has had an enormously better cost of ownership," said Bramley. "Analyst studies have said the total cost over three years is as little as half that of RISC Unix -- thanks to its manageability." This announcement could improve that further, but reducing the initial price difference.
The only major variable within each machine is the number of processors, and the choice of a Standard or Enterprise edition. The Enterprise edition comes with pre-integrated stack of bundled IBM middleware, including WebSphere, the DB2 database, Tivoli management and Lotus Sametime. IBM claims this alone is worth around US$400,000 on high-end systems.
"iSeries is going to be more software driven, with Al Zollar in charge," said Bramley. "The technology is entirely hardware transparent, which makes it the only fully 64-bit server in which every users application is 64 bit."
Upgrade on demand
The ability to upgrade capacity on demand -- and then down again when the crisis is past -- is an industry first and a calculated risk on IBM's part. Every server ships with extra processors that can be activated, when required for a fee. Typically, a processor that would cost US$30,000 to buy can be used for a cost of US$1,100 to US$1,300 per day.
IBM has had capacity on demand for permanent upgrade on its top models for some time, but that only allowed upward movement. IBM is now offering temporary capacity to cover peaks, which can be run for a period and then "sent back". Like a mobile phone contract, the company's contract even includes some free processor days.
"This is unique because it is truly dynamic," said Jarman. "You can switch power on and off without reconfiguring."
"IBM is taking a bit of a risk, putting out machines with processors in them, and not knowing if they will get any money back," said Bramley. "It is very very useful for customers, and they seem to have a through job of making it workable for both parties."
