IBM Now Paying People to Buy their Products

Amid uncertainty over Sun Microsystems' future under Oracle is upping the ante in a competitive campaign that aims to convince businesses to switch from Sun servers to Big Blue's hardware.As of last week, IBM doubled the monetary value of incentives offered under its so-called Power Rewards migration program. Under the new terms, IBM will offer customers $8,000 worth of software or services for every Sun Sparc processor ditched in favor of IBM Power servers. IBM previously offered $4,000 per processor for customers that made the switch.The program applies to Sparc-based Sun hardware, such as the Sparc, UltraSparc, and Sparc 64 servers, and also to Fujitsu systems that run on Sparc chips. A customer that moves off a Sparc -powered system running, say, eight processors would be eligible for up to $64,000 worth of rewards.IBM claims its Power System servers are two to four times more efficient than Sparc systems in terms of speed and energy use. Power servers use the AIX, Linux, and i operating systems.The program appears to be paying off. IBM said it secured 28 "competitive wins" over Sun in the first quarter and that it has helped 1,640 customers migrate to IBM hardware from systems made by Sun, HP, and other manufacturers over the past year.