Nicole Volpe
NEW YORK: International Business Machines Corp., the world's largest computer
maker, on Tuesday will unveil a new mainframe computer, the first to be sold
under a single brand name covering all its business computers.
IBM said it is moving its four lines of servers, which are computers that run
networks of other computers, under the single "eServer" brand name.
Each new model promises to handle heavy workloads with the fail-safe reliability
of mainframes.
"This is the most radical set of changes we've made to our hardware
business in 30 years," said IBM server group senior vice president and
group executive Bill Zeitler.
Wall Street analysts have lobbied with IBM to simplify its computer line-up
in order to save customers confusion and to target more focused competitors such
as Internet server leader Sun Microsystems Inc.
The first IBM eServer, to be unveiled on Tuesday, is the zSeries 900 - the
widely expected upgrade to its seventh generation of S/390 mainframes. IBM said
it was redesigned with the unpredictable demands of online business in mind,
able to handle some 83 billion transactions per second.
Along with the new design, IBM is also offering a more powerful operating
system, called zOS, denoting the operating systems for its "z" series
line of computers.
In a significant shift in how IBM prices its core computer products, the
company plans to price its new software based on how much a customer uses,
rather than total system capacity.
The pricing system, in which use of software and processing power is paid for
based on usage in a way similar to how one would pay an electricity bill, is
attractive to customers who experience highly volatile swings in demand on their
systems.
Computer maker Hewlett-Packard Co. has said it will offer similar kinds of
pricing on demand.
The other IBM computer lines to be brought under the eServer umbrella include
the AS/400, which was traditionally used to handle large internal business
operations. It will now be known as the I series, IBM said.
The RS/6000, which was positioned as a machine to handle large Web sites and
electronic business, is now known as the P series.
The eServer X series scoops up the lower-cost Netfinity and NUMA-Q Intel
processor-based servers.
"The eServer line replaces all the server product lines we've had
before," said Zeitler.
IBM promises that the new servers will provide some of the benefits of the
mainframe, seeking to capitalize on the company's more than 40-year expertise
with such high-power machines.
For example, all new servers will promise continuous availability and
security for a customer's entire system, including servers, software and the
network through periods of unexpected changes.
IBM also said it will offer partitioning technology, developed for
mainframes, throughout the server line. Partitioning allows a computer to run
different operating systems simultaneously on the same computer.
Computers throughout the eServer line, excluding the PC-based servers, will
allow customers to "turn on" extra processors built into the system.
IBM has set a three-month marketing budget of about $75 million, to familiarize
the public with the new brand name. For the next year, it has set aside $250
million for marketing the eServer line, it said.
"They are doing something I thought they'd never do, and that's to
create a unified brand," said consultant Sam Albert, president of Sam
Albert Associates of Scarsdale, NY. "This is a more nimble IBM that is
getting it together."
Albert said he thought the move was part of IBM's strategy to take aim at Sun
Microsystems Inc., the market leader in server sales. Sun chief Scott McNealy
has made fun of IBM's vast range of products, saying one would need a systems
integrator just to figure out IBM's price list.
"This is directly aimed at Sun's heart," said Albert.
(C) Reuters Limited 2000.