Sun Microsystems is to launch a customer migration
programme aimed at enticing users of Hewlett-Packard's 64-bit Tru64
Unix operating system on the Alpha microprocessor to Sun's
UltraSPARC processor and Solaris operating system.
The HP Away programme, which will launches on 21 July, will be
"designed to aggressively take market share from a key competitor
while also offering customers a more dependable solution",
according to Sun.
The program will target 400,000 Alpha customers, although Sun
did not say whether it would also target Alpha users running other
operating systems such as HP's Open VMS or the Alpha version of
Microsoft's Windows NT.
Last year, Sun launched its Blue-Away programme aimed at
bringing IBM's mainframe and NUMA-Q users over to Solaris. IBM, in
turn, retaliated with a migration program of its own, aimed at
Solaris users.
These kinds of customer poaching programs can pay for themselves
if they yield one or two major accounts, said Gordon Haff, an
analyst with industry research firm Illuminata., but admitted that
none of these programs are enormously successful.
"It's always tough to displace an installed system. You're
really talking about nibbling the margins. Unless a company is
really in free fall and has abandoned major product lines, it's
hard for someone else to get more than a scattered win here and
there," Haff said.
HP's final generation of the Alpha processor, the EV79, will be
introduced next year, according to HP's director of marketing for
business critical systems, Don Jenkins.
The company will continue to sell Alpha systems through 2006,
and will support Alpha and its Tru64 Unix operating system until
2011, but it is working with customers, via its Alpha Retain Trust
Program, to help them migrate to Windows, Linux, and HP-UX system
that use the Itanium processor, he said.
Alpha customers, particularly those running Tru64, would be well
advised to at least consider Sun's plan, said Haff. "If they have
to move to a different operating system and a different processor
anyway, there's very little reason for them not to be looking at
other vendors."
Robert McMillan writes for IDG News Service