IBM Announces Midrange Server Price Cuts

In a move that IBM claims as its most ambitious attempt to revamp its iSeries product line, IBM has announced price cuts of up to 80% on its midrange servers and is also bundling software along with this special pricing in an effort to stimulate growth in its iSeries line of products. IBM will reportedly spend $500 million over the next two years on R&D, marketing and programs that will benefit industry partners and software developers. The iSeries family of computers originated from IBM's AS/400 minicomputer line, and for branding purposes, the eServer iSeries is still known as the AS/400. IBM is still writing software applications that run on the AS/400 operating system. IBM is hoping that it can rejuvenate its middle range products and at the same time encourage customers to adopt its middleware technology software known as Websphere. The iSeries market is medium-sized companies with 100 to 1,000 employees that do not require the mainframe capacity of IBM's zSeries servers. According to IBM, the new iSeries machines will retail starting at $9,995 US to several million dollars each, and are all capable of running IBM's OS/400 programs, Linux, and Windows at the same time, on a single machine using different processors.