IBM: Bringing Trash Talk Back to High Tech

IBMers have been acting feisty lately, in a way not seen since Sam Palmisano was a direct report to Lou Gerstner and said he was tired of "former IBMers" at EMC "kicking sand in our face."

Earlier this month, IBM and HP went at it over who has the better blade servers. HP hit back, and it's likely the two companies will continue going at it for some time.

Now IBM's Elisabeth Stahl is taunting Sun Microsystems over its new server, "Thumper:"

"Thumper" is the cute rabbit in "Bambi," a character in a James Bond film, and Hopper's pet grasshopper in "A Bug's Life." I also understand that it is a name for a motorcycle and a popular drinking game. What it does not sound like is the name of a serious data server.

A few days ago Sun published X4500 (named, yes it's really true, Thumper) results on the TPC-H Business Intelligence benchmark. In the 3TB benchmark, the Sun result comes in at a stunning #10.(1) The 1TB result on a very small configuration was far, far behind the leader. (2)

Maybe a good codename next time should be something more like Simba.

(Ok, Ok. It's not exactly Tyson taunting Holyfield. But them's fighting words in the world of mid-range solution development.)

Sun Microsystems' BM Seer responded:

Ok there is a clear difference pointing to IBM's extensive marketing "spin" like we do here and IBM's sophomoric name-calling.

I hear IBM bloggers are commenting on the Sun Fire X4500's codename being "Thumper" and trying to make it sound like a not serious data server - '"Thumper" is the cute rabbit'. Well IBM, it isn't the name of the server, the name is Sun Fire X4500, and it set two world records beating the best servers IBM has to offer. One result used IBM DB2 database, how cool is that!

Both Stahl and Seer republish complex sets of benchmarks to back up their respective claims.

I've never played "Thumper" as a drinking game, but evidently it involves a lot of hand gestures. That may make it appropriate here, but in another context.