IBM plans to push Power7 server in first half of next year

Beijing time July 21 Evening News, according to foreign media reported today, IBM plans to launch in the first half of 2010 the new UNIX server configuration Power7 processor, eating sun, HP and other competitors market. IBM also says customers who purchase servers configured with POWER6 processors can upgrade to Power7. The move is designed to ensure that potential customers do not wait until next year to buy a server.　　IBM says some customers will soon test new servers. IBM's market share is about 37% in the 17 billion dollar UNIX server market, followed by Sun (28%), according to IDC, a market research firm.　　IBM said last week that the company's UNIX server market share increased in the second quarter. Scott Handy, vice president of marketing, strategy and sales support at IBM Power BAE, said IBM wanted to let customers who consider abandoning HP or sun products understand that the release and upgrade of their products are predictable and smooth. IBM has said the company will benefit from the uncertainty about the product that sun is being bought by Oracle. "We will make it clear to customers that the servers currently configured with POWER6 processors can be upgraded to Power7, which helps drive the third to fourth quarter of this year's server sales," Handy said. "IBM says it's quite handy to upgrade the system from POWER6 to Power7, simply by replacing modules that are integrated with processors and memory."　　IBM's software ensures that the system will not be interrupted, making upgrades easier.　　IBM says POWER7 is more efficient than POWER6 and can improve performance by up to 1-2 times in the same energy consumption. IBM has not disclosed the price of the new server. Handy says IBM is setting a price policy to ensure that customers who currently buy servers that configure POWER6 processors and then upgrade will "not suffer". (Zhi Xiang)