IT Jungle: IBM i and AIX Shops Pay a Premium Over Power Linux Buyers

This is the stuff that makes me crazy.

From Tim Prickett Morgan at IT Jungle.

To put it bluntly, IBM’s pricing on the new PowerLinux 7R2 rack-based server, which is only certified to run Red Hat Enterprise Linux or SUSE Linux, is crazy stupid lower than what IBM i and AIX shops have to pay. Or more precisely, to get the PowerLinux boxes within spitting distance of a comparable two-socket X86-based server (by Big Blue’s reckoning, not mine), IBM has had to radically cut the prices it charges for processors, memory, and disk capacity. The price reductions, which I figured out after drilling down into IBM’s pricing information, are jarring. It is a pity that the BIOS inside the PowerLinux 7R2, which is based on the Power 730 hardware, will not let either IBM i or AIX boot on them. And IBM better make sure that disk and memory features for the PowerLinux machines don’t work in regular Power 730 machines, too, or it will have just created a black market in parts based on these rather large price differences.

Sigh…

There’s a lot more revelations in Tim’s article. And you can read it all by clicking here.

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