In a bid to be more competitive against mission-critical server solutions from Hewlett-Packard and Oracle, IBM plans to introduce new Power Express 710 server systems based on Power microprocessors that will be priced at lower levels than traditional Power-based servers. The company will aim those products at small and medium-sized businesses who need big data and cloud technologies.

“Big data and cloud technologies that were once only affordable to large enterprises are now available to the masses. With these new systems, IBM is forging an aggressive expansion of its Power and Storage Systems business into SMB (small- and medium-sized businesses) and growth markets," said Rod Adkins, a senior vice president in IBM's systems & technology group, reports Reuters news-agency.

Mission critical systems in general are declining these days and losing market share to traditional servers running generally-available microprocessors, such as AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon as well as widespread operating systems like Linux or Windows.

In a bid to make mission-critical platforms more affordable and reduce customer’s wish to switch to mainstream servers, Intel Corp. recently said that its future Itanium microprocessors used in HP’s Integrity and Superdome servers will use the same mainboards as Xeon central processing units. Besides, both HP and Intel are working on to generally unify different server platforms.

Therefore, it is no surprising that IBM also reducing pricing and expanding availability of its Power-architecture servers. The Power Express 710 machines will start at $5947.

“They are serving notice to competitors saying we are not giving up and by continuing to offer ever-improving performance to customers, they are making sure there's no temptation to switch,” said Rich Fichera, an analyst with Forrester Research.

Tags: IBM, Power, Intel, Itanium, Xeon, HP, Integrity, Superdome, Oracle, Unix