Cray announces "cash for clusters" gimmick, er, buy-back

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Cray is announcing a customer promotion today that encourages customers to trade in other vendors’ hardware in exchange for its own gear

Cray logo“With a nod to the popular ‘cash-for-clunkers’ auto program, our ‘cash-for-clusters’ buy-back program gives workstation and cluster users a financial incentive to free themselves of their outdated systems,” said Ian Miller, senior vice president of the productivity solutions group and marketing at Cray. “Simply give us your old workstations and clusters from any vendor, such as SGI, HP, Sun, IBM, Appro and Verari Systems and we will give you top dollar as a trade-in towards the purchase of a new Cray supercomputer — it’s as easy as that.”

Well, sort of. Your credits can be applied to CX1, XT6, or XT6m systems, and your trade-in has to be between two and four years old, still work, and have been under continuous maintenance since purchase.

I’ll be interested to know in a few months whether this was successful — honestly, it smells a little gimmicky to me.

Comments

  1. Wait a minute. Wasn’t the “cash for clunkers” auto program done as a sort of last resort to produce auto sales for inventory sitting on the lot? Interesting message Cray is sending.

  2. Interesting question, but I suggest “guest” is reading too much into it. The Cray program specifically targets competitor systems, and isn’t the first such program offered by a vendor. (I seem to remember HP announcing a plan to go after Sun’s customers after the Oracle deal was announced.)

    I assume the name was selected primary to get people’s attention. Plus it has a not-too-subtle put-down of the “clunker” competitor systems. 😉