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IBM and Red Hat Sign Major Support Agreement
gnudot writes: "Red Hat announced this morning that they have entered into an agreement with IBM to provide support services for the entire eServer product line. This includes zSeries, iSeries pSeries in addition to the xSeries (What no qSeries? or 7Series?) which is already supported. Here is the story on Yahoo."
For those of us still not comfortable with IBM's new eServer marketspeak, here's a simple conversion chart:
eServer Name == Real Name
iSeries == AS/400
pSeries == RS/6000
xSeries == Netfinity/PC server
zSeries == System/390 mainframe
--Mythos
A couple of years ago, there were 250,000 AS/400s in service. That market isn't growing, but it's probably not contracting, since those customers are a hidebound bunch. I seem to remember that average AS/400/iSeries customers spend $100,000 or more on their machines.
I have no actual sales numbers on System 390/zSeries servers, but I seem to remember most customers spending at least $1 million for each of those.
Between the iSeries and zSeries customers, we're talking about customers who have enough cash to pay extra for support and services. And I know these customers most often pony up extra for IBM support services anyway, so it probably won't be such a big deal for RedHat to get a nice piece of that pie.
--Mythos
Red Hat's CFO was on CNBC this afternoon discussing the deal. He advised that the company is expecting strong growth for this quarter and re-iterated Red Hat's offer of providing software for every school in America if Microsoft would change it's settlement and provide all the hardware. Red Hat would also provide support and upgrades forever.