IBM server VP talks about Sun strategy

An IBM server vice president discussed IBM's strategy to tap into Sun Microsystems' customer base, in the wake of reports that IBM is in talks to buy the Santa Clara, Calif.-based server supplier.

IBM is rumored to be working toward a merger with Sun mostly due to the strength of Sun's server business. SPARC is Sun's chip architecture, while Solaris is Sun's operating system that runs on both SPARC chips and x86 processors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.

"Sun has a terrific installed base," Alex Yost, vice president IBM BladeCenter, said in a phone interview earlier this week in response to a question about Sun as a competitor.

Yost went on to say that IBM has an active business of migrating customers from Sun's SPARC architecture to x86-based servers. "I have a number of clients that are looking to go to Solaris on x86 or Linux on x86," he said. "That's very much something that we're actively doing."

Yost added that there are some IBM customers that require Sun's SPARC architecture. "We also have some clients in very specialized environments that require native Solaris on SPARC," he said. For these clients, IBM has partnered with Themis to offer SPARC blade server on IBM BladeCenter, Yost said.

Part of the challenge of absorbing Sun would be to integrate Sun's products with IBM's. On its Web site, Themis describes its T2BC Blade Server as enabling Solaris applications "to run natively, on an UltraSPARC T2 chip...within an IBM BladeCenter." The Themis product description continues: "The T2 Blade Server can share the same chassis with server blades that utilize other processor architectures and operating systems."

[meh130]

IBM's BladeCenter is a seven year old technology, which is ancient by technology standards. It is getting beaten badly by HP in the market. IBM's xSeries rack-mount servers are unimaginative and uncompetitive. x86 rack server are commodities and in commodity server markets Dell rules. IBM has hitched its wagon to its large, 4-socket x3850 and 16-socket x3950. But 4-socket x86 servers were rendered less relevant once quad-core came along, and Nehalem will make them even less relevant, and when Nehalem goes to octacore, it will make them irrelevant. As for 16-socket x86, there never was a market.

So the reality is Yost has one of the biggest dogs in IBM's portfolio, and I cannot help but think IBM feels it needs some fresh ideas in its x86 line, and that is one thing the Sun acquisition could bring. Generally Sun's x86 gear is well regarded, but Sun has had poor success. IBM has a large x86 customer base, and some new, well engineered gear might go over well. Also it allows IBM to take a dual-track approach to blades. BladeCenter for installed base IBM blade server customers, and the Sun 6000 blades for customers new to blades.

[caspianhiro]

Saying BladeCenter is a seven year old technology is like saying 19" computer racks are seven years old. The IBM blade is basically a cabling scheme. You are only sharing power, cooling, I/O and System Management. The chassis is simple, that's why it you have protected customers for so long. As far as innovative new technology, BladeCenter is usually the first to market because it is open.

Cell Processors, Power, SPARC, AMD, and Intel. You are right, not very imaginative or competitive.
First with 10gb ethernet uplink, Cisco switching, four and then eight gb fibre channel. Oh, and Nehalem.

And you display you ignorance again with comments about four socket and greater. Customers are trying to save costs by consolidating servers, I have a large customer that during a growth period went from over two million dollars per quarter down to a little less than that per year. Their project was completed in less than a year, and the ROI benefit began immediately. The x3950 can let you take consolidation projects further than any other product on the market. The problem with eight core servers is feeding them enough RAM to do useful work. The x3950 can go all the way up to 1 terrabyte of RAM, so now you have enough to do really useful work.

More cheap servers are what got us into this expensive mess. Cheap servers are like pet rabbits, cheap to get, but pretty soon you have too many of them and they aren't as cute and useful as they should be. HP is trying to apply their printer mentality to servers, with considerable success. Buy my cheap printer, and I'll stick it to you on maintenance, supplies and accessories. Sun has never done well competitive arenas, they never got any traction with 1u x86 and blade servers and their SPARC chip has been dying a slow death because of the combination of work moving to Linux on x86 and IBM Power for larger workloads. Solaris never got any traction because Linux is a better alternative. Solaris developers were going to have to do migration work anyway to move to Solaris on x86, so many of them just moved to Linux. It runs everywhere, x86, to Power even on mainframes for "real" server consolidation.

If IT shops understand and embrace cloud computing, all of this will become a moot point, because customers won't care what platform their work runs on, it will just run.

[papateklaptopaccessory]

I like IBM battery

[zvonr]

@caspianhiro Solaris never got any traction? you must be joking, not even the Linux kernel developers believe that: http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0810.1/0238.html

Linux is way behind Solaris technologically, it still has no match to Dtrace and ZFS, and will not for a while. These are facts.

IBM has no incentive to advance Linux, their only incentive is to make it run well on their hardware boxes and that meas driver development. Look at System TAP development they needed to assemble a "alliance of the willing"(Red Hat, IBM, Intel, Hitachi, and Oracle) to react to DTrace . HP and DELL who kill IBM on x86 sales are not part of it, but they will benefit from it...and it does not cost them a dime... This is from my point of view Linux's biggest problems...the main contributors are also competitors with each other... and then comes Microsoft with the lawsuits...