IBM says that nearly 400 IT customers have moved their critical business workloads to IBM servers and storage systems, off of Oracle/Sun and HP during the third quarter alone in what IBM says is a record high since the company began tracking such migrations four years ago.
IBM has been offering premiums to channel partners who help switch customers from the competitive systems to Big Blue’s technology, and the uncertainty around Sun’s hardware after the Oracle acquisition as well as HP’s recent high-profile top management changes may have caused some to look for more stability elsewhere.
For its part, IBM says that “customers continue to turn to IBM for its long-term investments in workload-optimized systems and stable, innovative product roadmaps, producing systems that reduce data center costs and are designed for emerging workloads such as analytics.”
IBM says that 286 customers migrated to IBM Power Systems from competitor systems in the third quarter, including 172 from Oracle/Sun and 95 from HP. And migrations to IBM Power Systems during the first three quarters of 2010 numbers nearly 800, according to IBM.
“There have been more than 1,500 competitive displacements to IBM Power from Oracle/Sun and more than 1,000 from HP since the advent of the program in 2006,” IBM said in a statement.
In addition, more than 100 clients switched to IBM’s System x , System z and storage offerings in the third quarter from Oracle/Sun or HP, IBM adds.
IBM offers customers who want to migrate, tools to help with the move. The program, the IBM Migration Factory, includes competitive server assessments, migration services, and other resources.