IBM Launches p690

edyavno writes: "IBM just announced the launch of their new high-end Unix server p690. It's based on its new Power 4 chip, and is in the same category as just announced Sun's SunFire 15K. It also includes some mainframe level features and can be used either as a single large server or divided into up to 16 "virtual" servers, running any combination of AIX 5L and Linux. Here's yahoo article, and here it is from IBM itself."

Comments

Re:*Warning* Rumor...

[Christopher Cashell]

The article makes some rather misleading comments, such as the stock price. . .

You can't directly compare stock prices without taking into account things like the number of shares outstanding.

For example, Sun has almost twice as many shares of stock out there, so even though it's stock price is lower, it's not quite as far off as it appears. (Market capitalization for IBM is $168B, and for Sun is $29B).

As things stand right now, I'd be very surprised if IBM made a bit for Sun, (although, as you say, stranger things have happened). IBM's been gaining in the Unix market for the past year or so, I think they'd be better off to wait a good bit longer before doing anything so drastic.

AIX and Linux

[Coz]

The AIX 5L release is "Linux-capable" - it should be able to run most "vanilla" Linux apps with recompilation.

That said, IBM has been pushing several of their AIX selling points into Linux, like their Journalling File System logical volume manager. Their system management tools are pretty good (no SMIT cracks, please) and they have good network management tools. I got out of the crystal ball business a while ago, but I imagine IBM would like to be spending their money "productizing" Linux on their platforms rather than supporting their own OS.

I'd say they're trying to take a piece of Sun's pie, and maybe try to keep some folks from moving to Win2K. Looks like a good price/performance system if you need that much to start with.