IBM Takes On Sun, HP With Next-Gen Unix Servers

IBM on Tuesday unveiled its next-generation Unix servers -- which use the new Power5 processor -- that it thinks will unseat rivals' Sun Microsystems' and Hewlett-Packard's lead.

The new servers in the pSeries -- IBM's line of Unix boxes -- are aimed to push past rivals that hold a tenuous lead over IBM. "The new p5s have literally twice the processing power of Itanium-based systems, and a 16-way p5 is equal in performance to a 72-way Sun server," claimed Karl Freund, IBM's vice president for the pSeries family.

"We've been gaining ground on Sun and HP for seven consecutive quarters," said Freund, "and Sun has just a two-point lead on us now. The p5 is going to take us on a tear."

Like its iSeries cousin, which moved to the Power5 processor in May, the pSeries p5 makes use of that CPU's virtualization and micro-partitioning capabilities to slice and dice each physical processor into as many as 10 separate virtual servers.

"I think the p5 is a pretty significant achievement," said Clay Ryder, a vice president with research firm Sageza Group. "With a price point that starts in the low five digits, customers can divvy up processors and come up with virtual Unix servers at about $1,000 each. "That means the virtualization of the Power5 is coming down to the mid-market, giving them, and even bigger small businesses, access to technologies that until recently were available only to mainframe users," added Ryder.

The first three models of the p5 server include the two-way p5-520 and the four-way p5-550, both of which run 1.65GHz Power5s; and the 16-way p5-570, which uses 1.9GHz Power5 processors. IBM will roll out larger systems down the road, said Freund.

All the p5 run IBM's updated versions of Unix, dubbed AIX 5L and AIX I5, and Linux (Novell's SuSE or Red Hat); the top-of-the-line p5-570 can also run the new IBM i5/OS operating system, the successor to OS/400 which runs Big Blue's i5 systems.

This is the first time that the iSeries and pSeries use the same hardware and are able to run the same set of operating systems. In fact, there are now more similarities than differences between the two lines, a strength that will play to IBM's advantage, said analysts.

"The boxes may be the same, but the markets [for each] are different," said Ryder. "Now IBM can tailor solutions to the customer." The p5 also offers what IBM calls Reserve Capacity on Demand, a capacity-on-demand feature that puts extra processors in the server, but doesn't activate them -- nor charge the customer for them -- until they're needed when traffic ramps up, such as during seasonal spikes or when a major financial news breaks and brokers are flooded with orders.

But it's the virtualization skills of the new p5s that IBM plans to tout when it pitches to customers. "You have to have great price-performance if you want to dance in the Unix world," said IBM's Freund. "But it's the virtualization story that's critical. It really isn't hard to explain virtualization to customers, not once you mention how a tenth of a processor can be a single server.

"I would not want to be a Sun or HP sales rep right now," Freund boasted.

Analysts weren't quite as bullish about IBM's ability to pass its rivals, but still thought the lead was up for grabs.

"The question isn't how much IBM will gain, but how much more of the market will Sun or HP hand over," said Ryder from the Sageza Group. "I see that it's really up to Sun to lose [Unix's top spot]." IBM's p5-520, 550, and 570 will be available worldwide August 31, said IBM, at prices that start at $12,920, $22,100, and $25,928, respectively.