IBM campaign targets Dell servers

IBM has a two-powered plan to lure Dell customers to its servers: Point out the holes in its rival's line-up, then offer price cuts on machines that fill the gaps.

Next week, the company plans to launch a sales campaign--"Dell on Ice"--that will offer 15 percent discounts on its BladeCenter system and on its x440 top-end Intel server. The campaign targets Dell's blade servers, which the computer maker has not been pushing hard, and Dell's lack of a high-end machine with more than four processors. "It will be a Dell 'win back'-focused approach," Jeff Benck, director of xSeries product marketing at IBM, said in an interview.

Big Blue is devoting a team of hundreds of sales and technical resources staff to the campaign, according to Benck. The program runs through the end of the year and is available to Dell customers who aren't IBM customers. "If you take away Dell pricing advantages, they're a pretty soft target," Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff said. At the center of the push are IBM's BladeCenter system, which houses up to 14 two-processor blade servers in a single chassis, and the x440 server, which can accommodate as many as 16 processors. Round Rock, Texas-based Dell has scrapped its plans for an eight-processor server, CNET News.com first reported in July. The company argues that linking two-processor or four-processor systems into a group that performs like a high-end system will prove sufficient for its customers.

Once-anemic Intel-based servers are growing in capability and market share. Research firm Gartner has projected that this year, Intel servers will replace Unix servers as the largest single section of the server market. As for blade servers, Dell believes they are still too new for most buyers. "We haven't abandoned blades. But demand isn't as strong as once perceived," said Reza Rooholamini, a director in Dell's Enterprise Systems Group. Dell predicts demand for blades will take off in about a year, said company spokesman Liem Nguyen, who declined to comment on the IBM marketing program.

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