HP aggressively targets Sun customers

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HP issued a press release about their “Sun Complete Care Program.” This is a direct shot at the Sun hardware business, and offers current Sun customers free migration and consulting if they consider making the switch. The program includes deep discounts on hardware and software for switchers, and financing incentives, in addition to all the free help making the switch.

HP logoMore than 100 customers have chosen to migrate to HP server and storage platforms over the last six months to significantly improve the return on their investments. On average, Sun customers are paying up to 80 percent more in total cost of ownership (TCO) for Sun SPARC servers than customers using HP Integrity servers. Many applications are also significantly more expensive to run on SPARC servers compared with HP servers. It costs 50 percent more per core to run Oracle’s database software on SPARC than on HP Integrity.

What’s interesting here is that HP was rumored to have been in the Oracle/Sun deal at the beginning, with Oracle buying the software and HP buying the hardware portion. When HP dropped out Oracle stepped up for the whole deal, but HP is rumored to have retained an option to buy Sun’s hardware business.

This release says that they may have kept that option on the books to buy and scuttle Sun’s hardware business — and to be there to pick up the pieces — at least on the server side. Or that the rumors weren’t true. Or just that HP has decided they aren’t buying anything and are just going to beat Sun the old fashioned way, one sale at a time. Lot’s of references in the press release to the “piece of mind” one gets from doing business with HP, the contrast that HP’s people want you to make presumably being the anxiety and night sweats one gets from doing business with Sun these days.

Comments

  1. Hmm, so HP want people to move from SPARC to Itanic ? Seems like an odd move to choose freely..

  2. Good luck to them – I can’t see any Sun shops with recent gear even considering a move from SPARC to … Itanium? Please. HP *are* having some success with older SPARC users who were considering a migration to x86. Buying out EDS has given them a lot of leverage in many accounts where previously they’d just be the storage or Wintel supplier.