IBM is out to push its Power-based servers into Big Data and the cloud.
Its problem is the cheap commodity servers sold by HP and Dell.
Its answer Tuesday was to cut the price of its proprietary hardware by as much as 50%.
That was the day it unveiled a line of eight Power 7+-based servers running AIX or Linux whose price starts a shade under six grand, the same neighborhood where comparable x86 boxes live, a first for IBM.
They’re supposed to be fitted with technology borrowed from Big Blue’s super-smart Watson supercomputer, the one that beat human contestants on the Jeopardy game show. The Watson widgetry will let users analyze Big Data and run Hadoop and set up a private cloud at a cheaper cost.