Midrange Servers: IBM's Hard Work Pays Off

After years of competition, the midrange servers category will likely be remembered for three achievements in the 2002 VARBusiness Annual Report Card (ARC). The first is for cooperatively reporting the survey's highest return on investment. The second is for finishing in the top 20th percentile in loyalty, mind you, for a fourth consecutive year.

Report Card Score

"I know not everyone likes the iSeries, but it has an enormous, loyal following because, in many customer systems, the real workhorse is the iSeries," says Peter Rowley, general manager of IBM Business Partners.

But, perhaps, iSeries' most discernible triumph this year is earning VARBusiness' Lifetime Achievement Award for leading the midrange servers category for four successive years. As the No. 1 contender in 11 out of 15 criteria, the iSeries garnered an overall score of 74, trouncing the survey's last-place contender, Sun's Enterprise Server, by nine points and even getting the better of its own Big Blue brother, IBM's pSeries, by three points.

"The iSeries is the ultimate VAR box," says David Wagner, director of product marketing at Houston-based solution provider BMC Software.

The iSeries attained the highest score in the category, an 88 in product quality/reliability, as it swept through all four subcategory wins: loyalty, product innovation, support and partnership,the most heavily weighted of the ARC groupings. Not surprisingly, in the past year, its perceived area of most improvement was product quality, cited by more than two in five solution providers deploying the iSeries. Partnering came in next with 29 percent of VARs rating it as most improved. With a devoted following, the iSeries earned the second-highest loyalty score (84) in this year's ARC survey, outdone only by Avaya in the voice and data networking category, with a loyalty score of 87. The iSeries' lowest score, 64, was in the area of ease of doing business, where it earned one of its four second-place showings. This criterion, in addition to postsales support, are the only two areas where the iSeries slipped a notch in placement from the 2001 survey (for more on the iSeries, see "Serve and Protect," starting on page 55).

Big Blue's pSeries advanced in this year's ARC survey, moving up from a tie for third place (with Sun) last year to second place in the 2002 survey. It garnered an overall score of 71, as well as top scores in richness of features, innovation (tying with the iSeries) and compatibility/ease of integration. It also placed No. 1 in postsales support, and claimed the runner-up position in the overall support subcategory. Of those solution providers polled, 39 percent credited the pSeries' progress mainly to improvements in product quality.

HP fell from second to third place in this year's ARC. Although the vendor placed first in the ease of doing business criterion and scored second best in loyalty, this was not enough to offset its shortfalls. Apparently busy integrating the AlphaServer line (formerly part of the Compaq family) with its own RP8400 series, the new HP showed notable declines in several ARC areas. It took third place in the general support subcategory, falling from a solid second place a year ago. Downturns were also evident in partnership, where it likewise sagged in performance.

Sun's showing in this year's ARC deteriorated significantly from a year ago. Sun's Enterprise Server captured the bottom slot in 12 out of the 15 criteria. Moreover, the vendor came in last in loyalty, nine points below the category leader. Sun appears to have suffered its worst setbacks in presales support, marketing support, communication and ease of doing business, plummeting in all instances to attain scores short of 60.

On a more channel-centric note, VARs said they source 79 percent of their midrange server purchases through distribution, 15 percentage points higher than the average vendor purchase at large. And more than three in five solution providers (62 percent) anticipate an increase in business with their midrange server vendors in the next 12 months.

Rob Wright contributed to this article.