IBM Hits Its Stride in Unix Server Race

IBM entered the Unix server market in 1988, trailing HP and Sun Microsystems in the race. Now it has 35 percent of the market. Its latest round of Power Systems releases aims to expand that lead with servers that contain multicore processors to increase speed and power efficiency.

"It is a race, and we're not slowing down."

That is how Ross A. Mauri, the general manager of IBM's (NYSE: IBM) Power Systems product series, describes competing against Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: JAVA) and HP(NYSE: HPQ) for the Unix server market.

IBM announced a number of new products and upgrades Tuesday to help keep its current lead in revenue -- 35 percent of the market in the second quarter of 2008 compared to Sun's 29 percent and HP's 26.

Servers With History

The Power Systems product line is the latest generation of business computer servers that started with the AS/400 in 1988 in Rochester, Minn.

Earlier this year, IBM consolidated the System i and System p servers -- heirs to the AS/400 legacy -- into the Power Systems line.

Then during the Large Users Group conference at the Mayo Civic Center Tuesday, IBM rolled out the second piece of that move.

That includes upgrades to the Power 570 server and the addition of a Power 560 model along with many other hardware and software developments.

The Power 570 and 560 are manufactured in Rochester and are largely designed here as well.

"Rochester is the brains of the Power Systems," Mauri said.

Scalability Upgrade

The new Power 570 was given a bump in speed by the addition of processors that double the number of cores in a system. That simply means twice the power and twice the efficiency under the hood with the no change to the exterior.

And the machine can be tailored to a business's specific demands and can be expanded without tweaking the software systems or data on the server.

IBM also added the new 560 to the Power line-up. It logically fits into a niche between the 570 and the 550 models. It boosts 4-, 8- and 16-core configurations and is designed to help businesses consolidate multiple workloads in different formats onto less machine.

IBM says it can handle the work of 13 of Sun's Fire V490 servers or four of its Sparc Enterprise M5000 machines.

Add IBM's Power VM energy management software and a single 560 can use 83 percent less electricity than those groups of Sun servers, according to Big Blue.

The race between the three technology giants was very different in 1998, when IBM trailed the other two.

Race Is On

The Power4 processor hit the market in 2002, bringing IBM into the race, but still in third place.

In 2005, Power5 rolled out and IBM moved ahead of Sun in the Unix server market and brought it neck and neck with HP. Power6 came out in 2007, along with software that reduced the need for IT staff attention and cut electricity use. "We left them (Sun and HP) in our wake," says Mauri.

"They are now about five years behind us," he says.

And yet looking to the future, IBM does not want to rest and let them catch up.

"We are working on Power7 and next week I have a meeting to hear about research on Power8," Mauri said. "We're not slowing down."