Sun pounces on HP stumble

Hewlett-Packard has delayed one Unix server improvement and backed away from another, and rival Sun Microsystems is responding with a promotion to try to lure customers affected by the situation.

The changes, which HP told customers about in October, primarily affect users of the AlphaServer line that HP acquired from Compaq and that Compaq in turn acquired from Digital Equipment.

HP is gradually phasing out the AlphaServer line, encouraging customers to move to HP's Integrity line of servers based on Intel's Itanium processor.

In the first slip, HP has delayed by up to a year the time when HP's version of Unix, called HP-UX, will include high-end features from the AlphaServer's version of Unix, called Tru64.

Second, HP decided to cancel the last AlphaServer processor, the EV79, and instead release a faster version of the existing EV7.

Rich Marcello, general manager of HP's business-critical server group, said in HP's letter to customers: "As the EV79 development program has progressed, working closely with our CPU chip supplier, it has become clear that the EV79 chip will not meet our expectations for performance or time to market."

The EV7 speedup, called EV7z, is expected to boost performance 14 per cent to 16 per cent over the EV7, Marcello said in the letter. Terry Shannon, author of the independent Shannon Knows HPC newsletter, said the EV7z is expected to top out at 1.33GHz. The earlier EV79 plan, which would have produced a chip running at 1.4GHz to 1.6GHz, would have meant a performance boost of about 25 per cent, he said.

Meanwhile, Sun, the top Unix server seller but a company under fierce competitive pressure, has expanded a promotion called 'HP Away' which offers a zero-per cent financing lease to lure HP customers. The program began in July in the US and was expanded to Europe, and now Sun has expanded it to Asia as well and signed up six new business partners to help customers switch to Sun gear.

Larry Singer, Sun's chief competitive officer, said: "The idea is to get them to move off [AlphaServer products] for roughly the same cost they're paying for maintenance for their existing systems."

Sun's approach isn't a surprise. Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff said: "They're attacking what they see as a huge vulnerability within HP. And it is a huge vulnerability - at the end of the day, the Alpha customers have a migration to go through. It isn't going to be a whole lot less painful staying with HP than going with someone else, whether it's Sun or IBM."

Stephen Shankland writes for News.com